Courts
This chapter examines the performance of the Serbian courts for
judicial efficiency/effectiveness. The methodology used in this chapter
corresponds to the one used in 2014 Serbia Judicial Functional Review,
and data and findings of the 2014 Judicial Functional Review were used
as a baseline. Data in this chapter were collected from the SCC and
international reports, as explicitly noted in the corresponding text.
The 2020 data, collected from the SCC report, are used herein only to
demonstrate particular general trends as the effect of the Covid-19
health crisis made the year 2020 unprecedented and unfit for
year-over-year comparisons. For more information see sections
‘Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic on Court Efficiency’ and
'Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic on PPOs Efficiency in
2020'.
Main Findings ↩︎
- From 2014 to 2019, the productivity in Serbian courts
improved in many areas, but there were still domains that needed
considerable attention. Most clearance rates were over 100
percent and the implementation of reforms that transferred most of the
enforcement cases to private bailiffs and probate cases to public
notaries. However, ‘bulk’ dispositions of enforcement cases made the
largest contributions to the favorable clearance rates; without them,
the improvements would not have been as remarkable.
- Cases delegated by one court to another inflated the
apparent number of cases nationally because these appeared in the
statistics both as cases being disposed of in the originating courts and
as cases registered in the courts receiving them. The total number of delegations
were seen in SCC’s reports, but individual court reports did not report
how many cases were delegated from or to that court.
- The timeliness of case processing, measured through the
CEPEJ disposition time indicator, dramatically and continually improved
from 2014 to 2019, but with remarkable variations by case and court
type. The total disposition time for Serbian courts decreased
from 580 days in 2014 to 267 days in 2019. The total congestion ratio of
courts in Serbia improved considerably, dropping to 0.73 in 2019. The pending stock was reduced by
more than 40 percent from 2014 to 2018, or from 2,849,360 cases at the
end of 2014 to 1,656,645 cases at the end of 2019. In 2020, the total
disposition time reached 274 days, and the congestion ratio decreased
slightly to 0.75, while the courts ended the year with 1,510,472
unresolved cases.
- The National Backlog Reduction Programme that started in
2014 markedly reduced the massive backlogs in Serbian courts even if it
did not reach its stated goals.
At the outset, the goal was to reduce the backlog to 355,000 cases by
the end of 2018, from 1.7 million at the end of 2013. However, 781,000
backlogged cases were still pending at the close of 2018. The strategy
was amended in 2016 to include a goal of approximately 350,000
backlogged cases for the end of 2020, which was not met, according to
the SCC.
- The Law on Protection of the Right to a Trial Within
Reasonable Time may not have achieved its intended purpose.
There is no evidence the Law has shortened court proceedings, and
enforcing it requires more judicial resources to determine violations
and penalties.
- There was significant progress in reducing the courts’
backlogs of enforcement cases, but it was not clear how effective
private bailiffs had been in cases that had started as enforcement cases
in the courts. The congestion ratio of enforcement cases in
Basic Courts improved from 4.88 in 2014 to 1.47 in 2019, but many old
enforcement cases were still in the courts as of 2019, the last year for
which comparable data was available as of early 2021. The lack of
genuinely effective and timely enforcement, particularly for cases
arising in large courts, remained one of the biggest challenges for the
Serbian court system.
- The transfer of administrative tasks and probate cases to
public notaries significantly reduced the work of many judges, although
the transferred probate cases were still included in statistics about
court caseloads, workloads, and dispositions. In 2013, Basic
Courts received and resolved more than 700,000 verification cases,
compared to roughly 110,000 in 2019. Also, in 2019, 91 percent of the
134,226 newly filed probate cases were transferred to public notaries,
which was an increase of 38 percentage points from 2018. Although the
transferred probate cases were still included in court statistics,
courts had little or no work to do with them once they were
transferred.
- Except for the Administrative Court, Serbia’s clearance
rates for first-instance cases in 2018 exceeded those of EU
courts. The Administrative Court’s clearance rate for 2018 was
notably lower than in other nations, but it improved in 2019.
- While the number of judges on a court is a factor in the
court’s efficiency, it is not the only one. The addition of eight judges
(one-fifth of the total) in 2018 was not enough for the Administrative
Court to deal effectively with the increased number of cases and falling
dispositions that year. By contrast, the Administrative Court
increased its dispositions and clearance rate in 2019 despite losing
seven judges (and only partly due to a decrease in incoming
cases).
- Dispositions per judge displayed substantial variations
over time and between courts. The most stable dispositions per
judge were recorded in the Appellate Misdemeanor Court, while
dispositions per judge continuously increased in the Higher Courts and
the Commercial Courts. Dispositions per judge in the Administrative
Court declined sharply in 2018 and recovered in 2019.
- The practice in Serbia of evaluating judges’ productivity
based on quotas for disposition is in tension with the need to resolve
older and more complicated cases. The age structure of pending
cases indicates how courts prioritize cases for processing and whether
they are disposing of a significant number of new cases relatively
quickly, while more complicated cases are left in part of the pending
stock that may never be resolved.
- The transfer of investigative responsibilities from
courts to prosecutors was intended to improve courts’ efficiency as well
as objectivity. Because prosecutors’ offices have required some
time to implement the transfer, the short-term result has been some
delays in case disposition by courts.
- Enforcement of contracts lags behind that in other
nations.
- There is room for improvement in the efficiency of
administrative tasks. Surveyed users indicated continuing
issues with having to make multiple visits, visit multiple offices, or
wait for a long time during court visits.
- Courts still had too few and inadequate means to sanction
parties and their attorneys for introducing delays in the progress of a
case. In most circumstances, it is not mandatory for judges to
discipline expert witnesses, parties, and attorneys for missing
deadlines. As well as affecting inefficiency, inconsistent application
of discipline can affect perceptions of fairness, and should be
considered in light of the chapter on Quality, which stresses the
importance of consistent application of laws.
- The SCC’s competitive Court Rewards Program put Serbia at
the forefront of innovation among European judiciaries in incentivizing
court performance. The program rewards improvement where it is
most needed.
- Meanwhile, court performance was intensely constrained by
court management and organization, practice and procedure, and party
discipline. Service of process has improved lately, but avoiding it is
still quite easy. Discipline by opposing parties in meeting
deadlines is still widely recognized as one of the main impediments of
procedural efficiency. Scheduling of hearings, the number of hearings
per case, the timeliness of their scheduling, and the frequency of
cancellations and adjournments hinder the efficiency of courts and cause
lengthy trials. The advantages of ICT tools are recognized but still not
adequately utilized.
Demand for
Justice Services (Workloads and Caseloads) ↩︎
Chapter Summary ↩︎
- The demand for court services in Serbia increased by 25
percent from 2010 to 2019, from a total of 1,778,022 to 2,224,102 cases
(including complex and simple matters). In 2019, 76 percent of
all incoming cases were received by Basic and Misdemeanor Courts. The
formal rise in the demand for court services in Serbia was caused partly
by recent procedural reforms and case registration practices. Judges and
court presidents interviewed by the FR team reported that judges and
staff were overburdened with work and believed that the only solution
was adding more personnel to the system. With 1,867,911 cases received
in 2020, the year heavily impacted by COVID-19 restrictions, the
incoming caseload decreased by 16 percent.
- According to the CEPEJ 2020 Report (2018 data), the
overall demand for court services in non-criminal cases in Serbia, as
reflected in its incoming cases (caseload), was higher than the EU
average, but Serbia had almost double the ratio of judges-to-population
than the EU average. Relative to population, Serbian courts
received 14.52 non-criminal cases per 100 inhabitants, while 12.34 cases
were received in EU Member States. However, with 37 judges per 100,000
inhabitants, Serbian incoming caseloads per judge were, in fact, nearly
half the EU averages.
- Caseloads were distributed unevenly among courts and
court types. Some small courts were extremely
busy, whilst larger ones were less so. Appellate Courts received a
smaller caseload on average than the SCC. In short, reforms and court
reorganizations have done little to address the uneven caseload
distributions.
- In 2019, workloads of Serbian courts reached the lowest
level in the observed period from 2010, primarily due to backlog
reductions. However, there were significant differences among
court types. The workload of Basic Courts decreased by 35 percent from
2014 to 2019, i.e., there were more than 1 million pending cases fewer,
while the workloads of Higher Courts more than doubled from 2014 to
2019, from a total of 145,345 cases to 344,205. The overall courts'
workload decreased further in 2020 as a direct consequence of lower
incoming cases and a favorable clearance rate of over 100
percent,
Introduction ↩︎
- Understanding the demand for court services as reflected
in the incoming caseloads of courts, including the type and quantity of
cases, court workloads, and their variations over time, is essential for
proper assessment of court performance. Absolute numbers should
always be put into context. To reach relevant conclusions, questions
that need to be answered are always relative and expressed in ratios,
percentages, and indicators. Whenever possible, case types are in this
FR analyzed separately, in a manner disaggregated by available
statistical reports.
Box 4: Case Weighting – the Serbian Experience
Overall Workloads and
Caseloads ↩︎
- As was true for the FR2014, overall demand for court
services is assessed in this report through caseloads and workloads
with ‘caseload’ defined as the number of incoming cases
for a given year, and ‘workload’ as the sum of the number of incoming
and pending cases for a given year.
- The rise in the demand for court services in Serbia from
2014 to 2019 was partly inflated by recent procedural reforms and case
registration practices, while caseloads and workloads continued to be
unevenly distributed among courts. Judges and court presidents
interviewed by the FR team repeatedly said that judges and staff were
overburdened with work and the only solution would be adding more
staff. The 2014 Judicial Functional Review
found a falling demand for court services in Serbia (when defined as
decreased caseloads), highly inflated caseload figures, and an uneven
distribution of cases. Serbia’s demand for court services was weaker
than EU averages; still, judges and staff throughout the system reported
feeling busy and overburdened with work. In the period covered by this
FR, the demand exceeded the EU average, while the number of judges
per capita remained one of the highest among the Council of
Europe (CoE) the Member States.
- In 2019 Serbian courts received 2,224,102 cases across
all courts. These included a large number of small matters that
should have required very little judicial work as well as a lower number
of complex cases. However, if Serbia’s court statistics did a more
sophisticated job of differentiating between simple and complex cases,
the system would have a more accurate view of its caseloads.
- The number of incoming cases increased by 25 percent from
2010 to 2019, as displayed in Figure 8. From 2010 to 2013 (2014
Judicial Functional Review data), these numbers had
fallen due to cuts in the types of cases being handled by courts.
Several services and types of cases were transitioned to other providers
(e.g. land registries, enforcement cases, and criminal investigations).
The decline in coming cases from 2011 to 2013 was approximately 24
percent. This pattern changed radically from 2014 to 2019; more than
400,000 more cases were received in 2019 compared to 2013. Noteworthy
portions of the increase that started in 2014 were due to case
migrations from one court to another (which often resulted in misleading
statistics about the number of cases in the system), new simple case
types, and other changed practices, as analyzed in more detail below. In
2020¸ 1,867,911 cases were received, 16 percent cases fewer in
comparison to 2019, primarily due to COVID-19 restrictions that caused
lower demand for court services.
Figure 8: Incoming Cases in Serbia from 2010 to 2020
Source: SCC Data
- Basic and Misdemeanor Courts received the highest number
of cases in 2019, together accounting for 76 percent of all incoming
cases. Basic Courts received more than 1 million cases; the
Misdemeanor Courts received approximately 600,000 cases and the Higher
Courts just under 250,000 cases. Commercial Courts received more than
124,000 cases, and the total for other court categories was 150,601,
although none of the other court types had more than 100,000 cases.
Figure 9 displays the breakdown of incoming cases across court types in
2019.
Figure 9: Incoming by Court Type in 2019
Source: SCC Data
- According to the CEPEJ 2020 Report (2018 data) the overall demand for
court services in Serbia, as reflected in incoming non-criminal cases,
was higher than the EU average. Relative to population, the
Serbian courts received 14.52 non-criminal cases per 100 inhabitants,
while 12.34 cases were received in the EU Member States and 12.65 in the
Western Balkans. Serbia’s demand for non-criminal
cases, as defined above, increased by seven percent compared to the
CEPEJ 2018 report (2016 data). This means that in 2018 around one in
seven Serbians had a non-criminal case in court.
- The CEPEJ 2020 Report found the demand for court services
in criminal cases in Serbia was 12 times greater than the EU
average. According to the CEPEJ, the number of incoming
criminal cases per 100 inhabitants increased by 12 times from 2012 to
2014 (from 0.88 to 10.60) and then reduced somewhat in 2016 (although
the number remained high at 7.07). The 2014 increase was caused by
Serbia’s new reporting methodology, which included misdemeanor cases and
commercial offenses in the category of criminal cases.
It is also probable that the differences in criminal case numbers were
affected by the variety of legal systems and reporting methodologies in
CoE Member States. For instance, in the 2020 evaluation cycle that used
2018 data, CEPEJ introduced a new subcategory of criminal cases named
“other” which in Serbia’s case most probably inflated the average with
various criminal cases, some of them mentioned in this
Functional Review as so-called ‘KR’ cases.
Figure 10: Incoming First Instance Cases per 100 Inhabitants (CEPEJ
2020 report)
Source: CEPEJ 2020 Report (2018 data)
- For severe criminal cases,
as reported by CEPEJ Serbia was under the EU average.
Serbia reported 0.74 incoming severe criminal cases per 100 inhabitants
in the 2020 Report (2018 data), while the EU average was 0.82. There
were 51,708 incoming cases of this type in 2018, representing one-tenth
of the reported total of criminal cases. This essentially was the same
percentage as severe criminal cases occupied in 2016.
- Meanwhile, with 37
judges per 100,000 inhabitants, Serbia reported almost double
the ratio of judge-to-population of the EU average. The only EU
Member States and Western Balkans countries with higher
judge-to-population ratios were Serbia’s neighbors Slovenia (42),
Croatia (41), and Montenegro (50). The incoming caseloads
per judge in Serbia were, in fact, nearly half the EU averages.
- Caseload statistics in Serbia remained highly
inflated. As the 2014 Judicial Functional Review reported,
Serbia counts many matters as ‘cases’ that would not be considered as
cases in comparative systems (i.e., in COE or EU Member States), so the
case numbers reported in this FR were inflated by matters that require
very little or no attention from judges rather than their staffs.
Serbia’s numbers were even more inflated by double-counting since the
same legal matter can be assigned multiple case numbers over time. For
instance, cases were counted as dispositions in one court when the
matter was delegated or transferred to another, and the receiving court
would assign a new number to the case and count it as an incoming
matter. The number of cases susceptible to double-counting during the
period analyzed in this FR meant no one in the judiciary could have a
reliable sense of how many cases requiring the attention of a judge were
in the system. This impedes the reliability of statistical reports,
especially when it comes to probate cases entrusted to public notaries
or enforcement cases transferred among courts,
as discussed further in this analysis.
- Rather than correcting inflated numbers of ‘cases’ and
their implications for judicial workloads, many if not most stakeholders
in Serbia accepted the reported numbers at face
value. The reported failure of some courts to
apply the applicable rules about court statistics consistently made the
reliability of the statistics even more questionable, for the system as
a whole, across categories of courts, and for individual
courts.
Caseloads and Workloads
by Court Type ↩︎
- The demand for justice services varied among court types
over the years from 2014 to 2019. The Higher Courts, the
Commercial Courts, and the Administrative Court reported increases each
year from 2014 to 2018, but in 2019 these court types all recorded a
slight decline. In other types of courts, demand fluctuated. Trends are
displayed in Figure 11 below.
Figure 11: Incoming Cases by Co$urt Type from 2014 to 2019
Source: SCC Data
- The number of incoming cases in Basic Courts rose after
2014, which was not foreseen in the 2014 Judicial Functional
Review. In 2019 the number of incoming
cases increased by 30 percent compared to 2014 and there was a similar
increase in 2017. Although all incoming case types grew (excluding
criminal investigations), the most significant contributors
to the rise in demand were litigious and non-litigious civil cases, as
displayed in Figure 12 below. The primary cause of the reduction in
demand recorded in 2018 was the decrease in the number of incoming
enforcements.
Figure 12: Incoming Cases by Case Type in Basic Courts from 2014 to
2019
Source: SCC Data
Table 3: Incoming Cases by Case Type in Basic Courts from 2014 to
2019
| Civil Litigious |
200,576 |
287,320 |
282,433 |
238,290 |
235,801 |
270,765 |
| Civil Non-Litigious |
198,294 |
230,275 |
230,029 |
240,375 |
268,532 |
294,255 |
| Criminal Investigation |
998 |
527 |
383 |
127 |
127 |
80 |
| Criminal (Other Than Investigation) |
118,599 |
126,616 |
130,055 |
133,465 |
161,347 |
151,146 |
| Enforcement |
303,805 |
322,737 |
306,956 |
448,651 |
293,300 |
351,159 |
Source: SCC Data
Box 5: Enforcement Cases and Their Impact on Overall Court
Results
- Incoming caseloads of Misdemeanor Courts increased
dramatically in 2015 and 2016, primarily due to a specific types of
execution cases. In 2019, Misdemeanor Courts received 632,715
cases. Expectedly, most of the courts’ caseload (almost one-third) was
related to 167,111 incoming traffic cases. As displayed in Figure 13
below, peaks were recorded in 2015 and 2016, when approximately 200
thousand more cases were received. The increase was generated by
traffic, public safety, and finance and customs matters. And what was
even more significant by extreme jumps in misdemeanor execution cases of
so-called ‘misdemeanor warrants’. Around 39 percent of
all misdemeanor cases in 2019 were received in Belgrade’s Misdemeanor
Court (247,222), while the lowest numbers were received in Misdemeanor
Courts in Presevo (1,709) and Sjenica (1,232). The caseload of
Misdemeanor Courts decreased by 21 percent in 2020.
Figure 13: Incoming Cases in Misdemeanor Courts from 2014 to 2020
Source: SCC Data
Box 6: The New Law on Misdemeanors
Figure 14: Incoming Cases in Misdemeanor Courts by Case Type in
2019
Source: SCC Data
- The growth of commercial offenses in Commercial Courts is
a prime example of how poorly planned legislative changes can create
even more burdens for the judicial system. In the Commercial
Courts incoming cases have grown steadily, amounting to 124,820 in 2019,
which was a 51 percent increase from 2014 but a three percent drop from
2018. This effect was driven by a five-fold increase in received
commercial offenses, which increased to seven-fold in 2018. The
Accounting Act requires the Business Register
Agency to submit complaints about commercial offenses against all legal
entities that did not submit annual financial statements or statements
of inactivity. In 2014, prior to the application of this provision, the
Commercial Courts received just over 4,000 commercial offenses. By 2018
this figure had grown to almost 31,000. In 2019 it declined for the
first time since 2014 to 23,000. These cases posed a burden not only to
courts but also for the assigned public prosecutors.
- The Higher Courts’ caseload more than doubled from 2014
to a total of 248,561 in 2019. Incoming cases grew each year of
the period from 2014 to 2018 by 13, 12, 48, and 20 percent,
respectively. In 2019, a slight decline of three percent was
recorded.
- Incoming criminal cases (other than investigations) in
Higher Courts were stable at around 50,000 until 2018, when almost
90,000 criminal cases were received, and in 2019 the incoming caseload
jumped again to more than 120,000. The majority of the increase
consisted of purely bureaucratic cases related to inquiries of other bodies whether criminal
proceedings are being conducted against an individual, received in the
Higher Court in Belgrade registered under 'KR Po1’. In 2018 25,846
incoming 'KR Po1’ cases were reported (43 times more than in 2017) and
in 2019 there were 55,842 (93 times more than in 2017). The other
category with significant increases consisted of the same case type
registered under ‘KR’ (6,883 in 2019 incoming cases, twice as many as in
2017). It caused significant increases in 'KR’ cases among eight of the
25 Higher Courts, while others
received only a few or none of them. Criminal investigation cases
remained at around 3,000, although with a slightly increasing
tendency.
- The number of civil litigious
cases in Higher Courts grew rapidly, as presented in
Figure 15 below. From 2016 to 2017, the number
of incoming litigious cases almost doubled, while in 2018 it grew by
only two percent. Conversely, in 2019 a drop of 31 percent was reported.
Overall, civil non-litigious cases more than tripled from 2014 to 2019,
from 5,428 to 18,173.
Figure 15: Incoming Cases by Case Type in Higher Courts from 2014 to
2019
Source: SCC Data
- According to the SCC
the primary cause of the increased caseload of litigious cases
in 2017 was the glut of 56,342 first-instance civil
matters filed by military reservists. These repetitive cases,
which challenged the amount reservists were receiving as financial
benefits, could have been be disposed of by a so-called ‘pilot decision’
of the SCC which has been, according to the Civil Procedure Code, used
for case law unification. These 56,000 cases probably were not the only
cause for the high number of new civil litigious cases in 2017 and 2018,
but the available data and interviews did not identify any other single
driver behind them.
- The Appellate Courts had a reasonably stable caseload
throughout the period, as displayed in Figure 16
below. Nevertheless, compared to the period covered by the 2014
Judicial Functional Review their caseload decreased by roughly 40
percent, mostly due to the reduced numbers of incoming criminal cases.
Still, the SCC reported in its 2017 Report that
the effects of the military reservist cases had started to spill over to
the Appellate Courts, and that more should be expected in 2018. In fact,
2018 incoming civil cases in Appellate Courts did grow by 14 percent
over the previous year, but available data did not show if it was the
reservist cases that caused the growth.
Figure 16: Incoming Cases by Case Type in Appellate Courts from 2014
to 2019
Source: SCC Data
- The SCC’s caseload of civil cases more than doubled from
2014 to 2019 – from 6,971 to 18,182, largely due to an expansion of the
Court’s jurisdiction in 2014.
Revision cases grew each year; from 3,735
in 2014, to 5,480 in 2015, 5,732 in 2016, 7,102 in 2017, 9,907 in 2018
and 10,531 in 2019. The revision threshold was reduced to 40,000 EUR and
a so-called ‘special revision’ was introduced as a
new extraordinary legal remedy, causing the caseload to increase. Nevertheless, the overall civil
caseload of the SCC was, to some extent, inflated by delegation cases
registered under ‘R’ (issues posed by delegations also are discussed at
Section 1.3.2.2. Case Dispositions, below). In 2015 there were
7,123, in 2017 there were 6,734, and in 2019 there were 6,469 ‘R’ cases
included in the incoming caseload of the SCC, while in the other
observed years, there were no more than 200 of these simple matters.
Criminal incoming cases in the SCC varied modestly over the years from a
minimum of 1,539 cases (registered in 2015) to a maximum of 1,898 cases
(registered in 2016).
- The Administrative Court experienced a constant increase
in its incoming caseload until 2019, when it declined by 11
percent. It received 19,423 cases in 2014, 20,315 in 2015,
21,548 in 2016, 21,741 in 2017, 25,426 in 2018, and 22,537 in 2019. This
increase was consistent with the continuous expansion of the Court's
jurisdiction through new laws relating to restitution, protection of
labor rights of employees working in local government and electoral
cases, among others.
- The 25 percent reduction in the caseload of the Appellate
Misdemeanor Court from 2014 to 2019 was instigated by the elimination of
two types of cases from its jurisdiction related to public procurement
and sentencing. The Appellate Misdemeanor Court received 39,103
cases in 2014, 29,583 cases in 2015, 26,658 cases in 2016, 26,444 cases
in 2017, 29,702 cases in 2018, and 29,178 cases in 2019. The reduction
was attributable to the elimination of appeals in the court lodged
against decisions of the Republic Commission for Protection of Rights in
Public Procurement Procedures and appeals concerning the substitution of
a fine for imprisonment. The former category dropped from 9,879 incoming
cases to only nine, while the latter decreased from 3,059 to 340
incoming cases. Other incoming case types varied through the period, but
their influence on the total caseload of the Court was much weaker. For
instance, there were almost 10 percent more traffic cases received in
2018 than in 2014.
Box 7: Misdemeanors Related to Public Procurement
Demographic Differences in
Demand ↩︎
- Calculated for all courts, Serbia’s incoming caseload
grew from 24.38 cases per 100 inhabitants in 2014 to 30.95 cases per 100
inhabitants in 2019. Not surprisingly,
the highest incoming numbers by court type in 2019 were recorded in
Basic and Misdemeanor Courts with 14.85 and 8.80, respectively. Trends
in demand per 100 inhabitants per court type are detailed in Figure 17
below.
Figure 17: Incoming Cases by Court Type per 100 Inhabitants in First
Instance Courts from 2014 to 2019
Source: SCC Data and WB Calculations
- Contrary to a view commonly heard in Serbia, there was no
firm correlation between court size and the burden posed by incoming
cases - some areas covered by smaller courts had relatively higher
caseloads than courts of the same types in larger cities. The
misconception that courts in capitals and regional centers faced
significantly higher demand was very typical among those interviewed by
the FR team, mostly because of the higher absolute number of cases in
the larger courts. Figure 18 demonstrates the lack of correlation
between urbanization levels and per capita caseload regardless of the
available number of judges. Caseloads per judge are analyzed in the
following section.
Figure 18: Basic Courts – Incoming Cases per 100 Inhabitants in 2019
vs. Urbanization Level
Source: SCC Data, Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia
and WB Calculations
- Of all Belgrade’s courts, only its First Basic Court and
Higher Court were the highest among their peers in terms of received
cases per 100 inhabitants. The Second and the Third Basic
Courts were 62nd and 28th, respectively. As for
the Appellate, Misdemeanor and Commercial
Courts, Belgrade’s courts were second.
- The highest caseload per 100 inhabitants in 2019 was
recorded in the First Basic Court in Belgrade – 33.58 incoming cases per
100 inhabitants. Interestingly, the second-highest demand at
29.21 incoming cases per 100 inhabitants was recorded in Basic Court in
Bor, which covered only one-tenth of the population covered by the First
Basic Court in Belgrade. Examples of smaller courts with higher
caseloads were found in other court types as well. In Figure 19 below,
Belgrade’s courts are displayed in green.
Figure 19: Incoming Cases in Selected
Basic Courts per 100 Inhabitants in 2019
Source: SCC Data and WB Calculations
Caseloads per Judge ↩︎
- CEPEJ data reveal that
Serbia’s average number of incoming, non-criminal first-instance cases
per judge was lower than of some of Serbia’s Western Balkans and EU11
regional peers. Incoming caseload per judge is measured by
dividing the number of received cases by the number of judges. As
displayed in Figure 20, judges from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia,
and Croatia received several times more cases than Serbian judges. These
countries usually serve as appropriate comparisons to Serbia because
their similar legal traditions, but that may not be as true for
caseloads since legislative reforms have changed the jurisdictions of
courts in these countries over time. For example, both Croatia and
Slovenia count land registry and company registry cases as non-criminal
cases (although most of the work on these matters is entrusted to the
courts’ administrative staff), while in Serbia, these matters are
handled by specialized agencies rather than courts. In addition, some of
the peer countries’ enforcement cases have remained in the courts to a
much greater extent than they have in Serbia.
Figure 20: Non-Criminal Caseload per Judge in Selected Countries in
2018
Source: CEPEJ 2020 Report (2018 Data)
- Incoming caseloads per judge varied in Serbia across
court types from 2015 to
2019. They increased consistently only in the Higher and
Commercial Courts. In contrast, there was a persistent decline among
Misdemeanor Courts. For other court types, the caseload per judge varied
from year to year, as displayed in Figure 21 below.
Figure 21: Caseload per Judge by Court Type from 2015 to 2019
Source: SCC Data and WB Calculations
- The caseload per judge in Misdemeanor Courts in 2015 was
the largest caseload covered by this FR, at 1,611. Misdemeanor
Courts’ caseload per judge decreased after that due to a combination of
falling incoming cases and an increasing number of filled judge
positions. What had been a relatively stable rate of around 450 incoming
cases per judge for the Appellate Misdemeanor Court started increasing
in 2018: it reached 479 in 2018 and 503 in 2019.
- In Basic Courts, the average caseload per judge in 2019
was 914 cases; however, there were substantial differences among
individual courts that did not correspond to their size, as shown in
Table 4 below. The 2019 caseload per judge grew by 15 percent
compared to 2014, due to increased civil and enforcement cases and a
slight reduction in the number of sitting judges. Of the 66 courts
analyzed below, only 15 percent were within average values while 38
percent were above average and 47 percent below average.
Table 4: Average Caseloads per Judge in Basic Courts in 2019
| Lebane |
7,342 |
5 |
1,468 |
Vranje |
20,387 |
26 |
784 |
| Third Belgrade |
55,039 |
38 |
1,448 |
Obrenovac |
6,076 |
8 |
760 |
| Aleksinac |
12,951 |
9 |
1,439 |
Despotovac |
6,040 |
8 |
755 |
| Leskovac |
46,026 |
33 |
1,395 |
Backa Palanka |
6,599 |
9 |
733 |
| First Belgrade |
157,551 |
115 |
1,370 |
Mladenovac |
10,256 |
14 |
733 |
| Pozega |
10,596 |
8 |
1,325 |
Cacak |
15,364 |
21 |
732 |
| Knjazevac |
6,361 |
5 |
1,272 |
Senta |
5,702 |
8 |
713 |
| Sombor |
21,497 |
18 |
1,194 |
Novi Pazar |
10,624 |
15 |
708 |
| Bor |
14,201 |
12 |
1,183 |
Lazarevac |
6,895 |
10 |
690 |
| Subotica |
23,608 |
20 |
1,180 |
Brus |
3,428 |
5 |
686 |
| Uzice |
19,783 |
17 |
1,164 |
Mionica |
3,417 |
5 |
683 |
| Sremska Mitrovica |
10,210 |
9 |
1,134 |
Ub |
4,086 |
6 |
681 |
| Kragujevac |
48,599 |
43 |
1,130 |
Prokuplje |
12,244 |
18 |
680 |
| Loznica |
14,616 |
14 |
1,044 |
Raska |
3,373 |
5 |
675 |
| Nis |
66,349 |
64 |
1,037 |
Zajecar |
12,669 |
19 |
667 |
| Vrbas |
15,288 |
15 |
1,019 |
Ruma |
7,937 |
12 |
661 |
| Zrenjanin |
21,324 |
21 |
1,015 |
Gornji Milanovac |
3,958 |
6 |
660 |
| Kraljevo |
13,189 |
13 |
1,015 |
Pancevo |
16,197 |
25 |
648 |
| Kikinda |
11,065 |
11 |
1,006 |
Paracin |
13,267 |
21 |
632 |
| Prijepolje |
6,855 |
7 |
979 |
Vrsac |
8,145 |
13 |
627 |
| Velika Plana |
11,632 |
12 |
969 |
Surdulica |
8,109 |
13 |
624 |
| Second Belgrade |
43,519 |
45 |
967 |
Stara Pazova |
12,334 |
20 |
617 |
| Kursumlija |
4,787 |
5 |
957 |
Ivanjica |
6,107 |
10 |
611 |
| Veliko Gradiste |
3,753 |
4 |
938 |
Krusevac |
14,889 |
25 |
596 |
| Trstenik |
5,596 |
6 |
933 |
Novi Sad |
54,029 |
92 |
587 |
| Sabac |
26,233 |
29 |
905 |
Bujanovac |
5,087 |
10 |
509 |
| Pozarevac |
22,290 |
25 |
892 |
Negotin |
5,793 |
12 |
483 |
| Pirot |
10,127 |
12 |
844 |
Sjenica |
2,398 |
5 |
480 |
| Becej |
5,848 |
7 |
835 |
Priboj |
2,344 |
5 |
469 |
| Jagodina |
14,816 |
18 |
823 |
Sid |
2,789 |
6 |
465 |
| Smederevo |
16,395 |
20 |
820 |
Valjevo |
11,284 |
27 |
418 |
| Petrovac on Mlava |
5,641 |
7 |
806 |
Majdanpek |
1,629 |
5 |
326 |
| Arandjelovac |
9,636 |
12 |
803 |
Dimitrovgrad |
1,226 |
5 |
245 |
Source: SCC Data and WB Calculation
Box 8: Impact of the Reappointment of Judges and the Past Reform of
the Court Network
Workloads ↩︎
- Overall court workloads, defined as the sum of received
cases and carried-over cases from previous years, as noted above,
declined by seven percent in Serbia from 2010 to 2019. In 2014 the workload comprised
4,642,602 cases, 3,925,414 cases were handled in courts in 2019, while
3,524,301 cases were pending in 2020. See Figure 22.
Figure 22: Workloads in Serbian courts from 2010 to 2020
Source: SCC Data
- Fifty-two percent of the total court workload in 2019
consisted of Basic Court cases. Basic Courts’ workload
decreased by 35 percent from 2014, i.e., there were more than 1 million
pending cases fewer in 2019. As discussed elsewhere in this FR, the
reduction was caused primarily by falling enforcement workloads in Basic
Courts. In 2020, the workload of Basic Courts fell further, by 11
percent, to 1,806,129 cases. See Figure 23.
Figure 23: Workloads in Basic Courts from 2014 to 2020
Source: SCC Dana
- Workloads of Higher Courts more than doubled from 2014 to
2019, from 145,345 cases to 344,205. The numbers increased each
year except 2019, but the most drastic increases occurred in 2017 and
2018, by 47 and 30 percent, respectively.
- All other types of court workloads also increased from
2014 to 2019, except for the Appellate Misdemeanor Court and the
Appellate Courts. The Appellate Misdemeanor Court and the
Appellate Courts reduced their workloads by 22 and 12 percent,
respectively.
Efficiency in
the Delivery of Justice Services ↩︎
Chapter Summary
- From 2014 to 2019, the productivity in Serbian courts
improved in many areas, but there were still domains that needed
considerable attention. Most clearance rates were over 100
percent due to the increase in dispositions, and implementation of
reforms that transferred enforcement cases to private bailiffs and
probate cases to public notaries. However, ‘bulk’ dispositions of
enforcement cases made the largest contributions to the favorable
clearance rates and without them, the improvements would not have been
as remarkable.
- As noted in the previous section, delegated cases
inflated the number of cases nationally. These appeared in the
statistics both as cases being disposed of in the originating courts and
as cases registered in the courts receiving them. The total number of
delegations were seen in SCC’s reports but individual court reports did
not report how many cases were delegated from or to that court.
- The timeliness of case processing, measured through the
CEPEJ disposition time indicator, continually improved from 2014 to
2019, but with remarkable variations by case and court
type. The total disposition time for Serbian courts decreased
from 580 days in 2014 to 267 days in 2019 and the total congestion ratio
of courts in Serbia improved considerably, dropping to 0.73 in 2019. The pending stock was reduced by
more than 40 percent from 2014 to 2018, or from 2,849,360 cases at the
end of 2014 to 1,656,645 cases at the end of 2019. In 2020, the total
disposition time reached 274 days, the congestion ratio decreased
slightly to 0.75, while the courts ended the year with 1,510,472
unresolved cases.
- The National Backlog Reduction Programme that started in
2014 markedly reduced the massive backlogs in Serbian courts even if it
did not reach its stated goals.
At the outset, the goal was to reduce the backlog to 355,000 cases by
the end of 2018, from 1.7 million at the end of 2013. However, 781,000
backlogged cases were still pending at the end of 2018. The strategy was
amended in 2016 to include a goal of approximately 350,000 backlogged
cases for the end of 2020, which was not met, according to the
SCC.
- There was significant progress in reducing the courts’
backlogs of enforcement cases, but it was not clear how effective
private bailiffs had been in cases that had started as enforcement cases
in the courts. The congestion ratio of enforcement cases in
Basic Courts improved from 4.88 in 2014 to 1.47 in 2019, but many old
enforcement cases were still in the courts as of 2019, the last year for
which comparable data was available as of early 2021. The lack of
genuinely effective and timely enforcement, particularly for cases
arising in large courts, remained one of the biggest challenges for the
Serbian court system.
- The transfer of administrative tasks and probate cases to
public notaries significantly reduced the work of many judges, although
the transferred probate cases were still included in statistics about
court caseloads, workloads, and dispositions. In 2013, Basic
Courts received and resolved more than 700,000 verification cases,
compared to roughly 110,000 in 2019. Also In 2019, 91 percent of the
134,226 newly filed probate cases were transferred to public notaries,
which was an increase of 38 percentage points from 2018. Although the
transferred probate cases were still included in court statistics,
courts had little or no work to do with them once they were
transferred.
- Meanwhile, court performance was intensely constrained by
court management and organization, practice and procedure, and party
discipline. Service of process has improved lately, but
avoiding it is still quite easy. Party discipline is still widely
recognized as one of the main impediments of procedural efficiency.
Scheduling of hearings, the number of hearings per case, the timeliness
of their scheduling, and the frequency of cancellations and adjournments
hinder the efficiency of courts and cause lengthy trials. The advantages
of ICT tools are recognized but still not adequately utilized.
Production and
Productivity of Courts ↩︎
- The terms ‘production’ and ‘productivity’ are based on
the indicators of clearance rates, total dispositions, and dispositions
per judge. These indicators are actionable, meaning they can be
used as the bases for various measures to improve court efficiency. They
also enable objective comparison between and among different courts and
court types. Each indicator is described in more detail below.
Clearance Rates
- Clearance rates, which measure the number of resolved
cases as a percentage of the number of incoming cases, are among the
most commonly used indicators to monitor court performance both inside
and outside of Europe. A clearance rate indicates whether the
court is keeping up with its caseload or generating pending stock. A
clearance rate below 100 percent indicates that pending stock is being
generated, while a clearance rate of over 100 percent suggests that the
it is being reduced.
- The combined clearance rate for all courts in Serbia from
2014 to 2019 remained at over 100 percent, although it temporarily
decreased to 98 percent in 2015. The most exceptional year
during the period was 2016, when numerous enforcement cases were
dismissed, as noted above, and as a result, the overall clearance rate
for 2016 was 140 percent. In 2017, the combined rate was still over 100,
at 106 percent, while in 2020, it reached 108 percent.
Figure 24:Clearance Rates by Court Types from 2014 to 2019
Source: SCC Data and WB Calculations
- Except for administrative cases, Serbia’s clearance rates
for first-instance cases in 2018 exceeded those of EU courts, according
to the CEPEJ 2020 Report. In 2018, Serbia’s
clearance rate of 73 percent for administrative matters was 36
percentage points lower than the rate for cases in the EU. In civil and
litigious commercial cases, Serbia achieved an overall clearance rate of
110 percent, as opposed to the EU average of 101 percent. Serbia’s
clearance rate for criminal cases was 104 percent, six percentage points
higher than the EU average. Compared to the CEPEJ evaluation cycle that
examined data from 2016, these results represented an improvement in the
civil, commercial, and criminal domains but a decline for administrative
cases. However, available data was not enough to explain the variations
in clearance rates among courts within the same categories, which
underlines the need for individual courts and the SCC to conduct and
publish more analyses of the reasons for the often extreme differences
in court productivity.
Figure 25: Clearance Rates of 1st Instance Cases According to CEPEJ
2020 Report (2018 data)
Source: CEPEJ Report 2020
- Overall clearance rates of Serbia’s Basic Courts from
2014 to 2019 were well above 100 percent; even more impressively,
starting in 2017 the results show the Basic Courts owed their favorable
clearance rates to results achieved in non-enforcement civil and
criminal cases, rather than the dismissal of backlogged enforcement
cases. Dismissal of enforcement cases was the primary factor in
the positive clearance rates from 2014 through 2016. Setting enforcement
cases aside, Basic Courts resolved fewer civil cases than they received
in 2014 and 2015, while the calculated clearance rate for 2016 was 101
percent. The Basic Court overall rates were
110 percent in 2014 and 2015, 191 percent in 2016, 116 percent in 2017,
114 percent in 2018 and 104 percent in 2019.
- Clearance rates of many individual Basic Courts were
close to or higher than 100 percent but with substantial variations even
among courts of similar size and/or urban setting. For example,
the First Basic Court in Belgrade achieved 92 percent in 2014, while in
2015, this rose to 123 percent. The unfavorable clearance rate of the
First Basic Court in Belgrade in 2014 probably was due in large part to
the reorganization of the court network (see Box 8). Unsurprisingly, the
influence of enforcement dismissals was considerable in this court,
causing extremely high clearance rates in 2016 (470 percent) and 2017
(295 percent). In contrast, both the Second and Third Basic Courts in
Belgrade had positive clearance rates in 2016, but in 2017 this changed
dramatically solely because of the high number of enforcement cases
transferred to them from the First Basic Court in Belgrade: this was
done, at least in part, to align the distribution of these cases with
the territorial limits of those courts. For 2017, the Second Basic Court
reported a clearance rate of 39 percent, while the Third Basic Court’s
clearance rate was only 34 percent. In 2018, clearance rates recovered
to 127 percent for the Second Basic Court and 99 percent for the Third.
While much of this improvement was due to the dismissal or transfer to
private bailiffs of many of the transferred enforcement cases, there
were improvements in clearance rates for other types of cases as
well.
- Thirteen Basic Courts
of varying sizes and locations did not achieve 100 percent clearance
rates in 2019. However, half of these ‘underperformers’ were
very close to 100 percent, with clearance rates of 97 percent or higher.
The lowest clearance rate among them was that of the Basic Court in
Leskovac at 88 percent, which was caused by the combination of an
increased incoming caseload mainly of civil litigious cases and a 13
percent reduction in the number of judges at the Court compared to 2015
and 2016.
Figure 26: Clearance Rates of Selected Basic Courts from 2014 to
2019
Source: SCC Data and WB Calculations
- The Higher Courts’ clearance rates were relatively low
and decreased from 2014 to 2017, but the overall results increased
rapidly in 2018 and 2019, when their combined rate was 102
percent. In 2017 only the Higher Court in Prokuplje managed to
reach a clearance rate above 100 percent (at 101 percent). All other
courts were well below 100 percent, even down to 66 percent in the
Higher Courts in Kragujevac and Pirot. In 2018 the variations were
particularly extreme -- from 70 percent in Kragujevac to 172 percent in
Krusevac. In 2019, 68 percent of Higher Courts had clearance rates of
100 percent or more, but the SCC did not release any analysis that
accounted for the more uniform results, if one was done.
- From each year from 2014 to 2019, only the Higher Court
in Belgrade reported a clearance rate below 100 percent, while no single
Higher Court had a clearance rate of 100 percent or higher throughout
the period. In 2019, Higher Courts in Valjevo and Kragujevac
reversed a negative series of clearance rates that stretched back to
2014 by achieving 123 and 119 percent, respectively. Both of those
courts received fewer cases and disposed of more civil first-instance
cases in 2019 than in the previous years.
- The Appellate Courts’ overall clearance rate dropped from
109 percent in 2014 to 99 percent in 2017 and then increased to 103
percent in 2019. In 2019, each of the four Appellate Courts
produced favorable results with clearance rates equal to or over 100
percent: 106 percent in Belgrade, 103 percent in Kragujevac and Nis, and
100 percent in Novi Sad.
- Clearance rates for the Misdemeanor Courts varied widely
from 2014-2019, and not all of the reasons for the variations were clear
from available data. There also was no available information
from the judiciary about the cause of the fluctuations. From 2014 to
2018 Misdemeanor Courts improved their overall clearance rate to 113
percent, but it dropped it to 97 percent in 2019, without any apparent
regard to the number of judges in the courts. The number of judges in
Misdemeanor Courts fell by 10 percent from 2015 to 2018, but the
remaining judges still resolved more cases each year and improved their
productivity during that period. In contrast, the number of judges then
increased by 12 percent in 2019, but dispositions decreased by nine
percent. The highest clearance rate in 2019 was produced by the
Misdemeanor Court in Vranje (126 percent), while the lowest was that of
the Misdemeanor Court in Sremska Mitrovica (74 percent). Of the 44
Misdemeanor Courts in Serbia, 30 of them, or 68 percent, achieved
clearance rates of 100 percent or higher in 2019, which was a reduction
of 19 percentage points compared to 2018.
- In 2019 the Appellate Misdemeanor Court clearance rate
improved by two percentage points compared to 2018 but was still
negative due to increased incoming caseloads in 2018 and 2019.
With a rate of 99 percent in 2019, the Court still did not manage to
match the positive rates it had from 2015 to 2107.
- Commercial Courts’ overall clearance rates varied between
100 to 110 percent, and the same generally was true of the Appellate
Commercial Court. The highest clearance rate of Commercial
Courts was 112 percent recorded in 2019. The lowest was 99 percent in
2018, a year when 44 percent of the Commercial Courts could not reach
the 100 percent clearance rate. These were Commercial Courts in
Belgrade, Kraljevo, Sombor, Valjevo, Sremska Mitrovica, Cacak, and
Leskovac (which had the lowest clearance rate of the group at 89
percent). In 2019, only the Commercial Court in Pancevo did not achieve
a clearance rate of 100 percent, and it came close at 98 percent. The
one-year drop in its clearance rate reported by the Appellate Commercial
Court in 2015 was caused primarily by a jump in incoming cases
(particularly claims involving the right to trial within a reasonable
time in bankruptcy cases), while the number of dispositions remained
unchanged.
- Clearance rates for the Administrative Court decreased
each year from 2014 (104 percent) to 2018 (73 percent): 2019 brought
signs of a limited recovery with a clearance rate of 94
percent. The declines in the clearance rates for the
Administrative Court were accompanied by the constant growth of the
Court’s pending cases. The addition of eight judges (one-fifth of the
total) in 2018 was not enough for the Court to deal effectively with the
increased number of cases and falling dispositions that year. In 2019,
the court lost seven judges, so the increased clearance rate for 2019
had to be due to the 11 percent decrease in incoming cases and a 14
percent increase in dispositions.
- The SCC significantly improved its clearance rate each
year from 2014 (81 percent) to 2017 (101 percent in 2017), but the rate
declined in 2018 (95 percent) and 2019 (92 percent), apparently due to
increased numbers of civil cases. The SCC reported its
declining clearance rates in 2018 and 2019 were due to “changes in
regulation on the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court of Cassation,
reduction of the review threshold to EUR 40,000 € in RSD equivalent, the
introduction of a special revision as a new extraordinary legal remedy,
as well as the expansion of the jurisdiction of the highest court to
decide on the revision, i.e. to decide on the new extraordinary legal
remedies.”
Case Dispositions
- Many judicial systems use case dispositions - the total
number of cases resolved each year – as an indicator of court production
and productivity, but these statistics were inflated to some extent in
Serbia for the period under review. For purposes of this FR,
“dispositions” refer to the resolution of cases in a particular court.
As this chapter already has shown, many of Serbia’s reported
dispositions are not final resolutions because the case may have been
delegated or transferred, appealed or remanded to a lower court for
further proceedings. As an incoming case in the new court, those cases
would have received a new number, so the same legal matter may have had
several case numbers during its lifetime and be counted as a
“disposition” several times.
- Significant variations in dispositions may demonstrate
the need to reallocate resources, adjust targets or budget allocations,
and can be used to assess the effects of specific reforms. For
example, in Serbia, the number of case dispositions was heavily
influenced by the introduction of the Criminal Procedure Code 2013 (CPC)
with its transfer of investigative responsibilities from courts to
prosecutors in late 2013, and the introduction in 2012 of private
bailiffs for the enforcement of court decisions.
Both of these reforms enabled judges to reallocate their efforts to
other case types.
- In 2019 the SCC delegated approximately 6,200 cases from overburdened
courts. This intervention aimed to (ad
hoc) distribute cases more evenly among courts and thus facilitate
faster resolutions. In 2015, 2017 and 2019 this possibility was used to
a greater extent. Although this is not clear from
the available reports, considerably fewer resolved delegations
registered in other studied years is a result of conflicts of
jurisdiction cases reported under the same category.
There is no adequate mention of delegations in Serbian annual court
reports, and the criteria applied for it remained unknown for this
analysis. Yet, since data confirm that certain smaller courts tend to be
busier than the larger ones, it would be essential to consider that
factor while deciding on delegations.
- Variations in disposition numbers also were due in part
to factors that were exogenous to the judiciary, such as the attorney
strike in Belgrade of 2014-15 (see Box 9 below), and perhaps the rumored
tendency of some judges to concentrate on cases that are the most easily
resolved.
Box 9: The Attorney Strikes in 21st Century Serbia
- In 2019 Serbian courts reported the disposition of
2,268,769 cases, a 27 percent increase from 2014. As incoming caseloads
grew in the Misdemeanor, Basic, Higher and Appellate Commercial Courts,
as well as the SCC, so did their dispositions. Figure 27 below
displays variations in annual dispositions of Serbian courts from 2010
to 2019 and illustrates that, for the most part, the system reported
disposing of more cases than it received. The Basic Courts’ positive
results produced a major spike in 2011, which the FR2014 attributed to
the withdrawal of large numbers of cases involving unpaid utility bills,
and there were remarkable numbers of disposed of cases again from 2014
to 2016 (2016 being a prime year for the disposition of enforcement
cases). Dispositions started declining in 2017 with a 21 percent drop.
This was followed by a two percent drop in 2018, an additional one
percent drop in 2019, and an 11 percent drop in 2020.
Figure 27: Total Dispositions of Serbian Courts from 2010 to 2020
Source: SCC Data
- As shown in Table 5 and Figure 28 below, total annual
dispositions varied noticeably across court and case types, with the
Basic and Misdemeanor Courts having the strongest influence on the
overall numbers. Dispositions consistently increased only in
Commercial Courts. The previously impressive improvements in the Higher
Courts ended in 2019, with a decline of two percent.
Table 5: Total Dispositions by Court Type and Case Type from 2014 to
2019
| Basic Courts |
906,843 |
1,065,071 |
17percent |
1,815,045 |
70percent |
1,226,428 |
-32percent |
1,093,219 |
-11percent |
1,110,393 |
2percent |
| Civil Litigious Cases |
186,372 |
263,288 |
41percent |
279,302 |
6percent |
257,627 |
-8percent |
249,228 |
-3percent |
245,459 |
-2percent |
| Civil Non-Litigious Cases |
187,032 |
219,321 |
17percent |
234,560 |
7percent |
249,897 |
7percent |
270,444 |
8percent |
290,623 |
7percent |
| Criminal Investigation |
4,046 |
1,056 |
-74percent |
520 |
-51percent |
213 |
-59percent |
136 |
-36percent |
90 |
-34percent |
| Criminal (Other than Investigation) |
132,569 |
136,622 |
3percent |
136,351 |
0percent |
136,899 |
0percent |
161,398 |
18percent |
151,682 |
-6percent |
| Enforcement |
396,824 |
444,784 |
12percent |
1,164,312 |
162percent |
581,792 |
-50percent |
412,013 |
-29percent |
422,539 |
3percent |
| Higher Courts |
109,037 |
120,817 |
11percent |
125,132 |
4percent |
173,319 |
39percent |
259,716 |
50percent |
254,759 |
-2percent |
| Civil Litigious Cases |
49,287 |
54,134 |
10percent |
62,239 |
15percent |
110,566 |
78percent |
160,243 |
45percent |
113,547 |
-29percent |
| Civil Non-Litigious Cases |
4,315 |
9,074 |
110percent |
9,630 |
6percent |
7,395 |
-23percent |
9,998 |
35percent |
16,694 |
67percent |
| Criminal Investigation |
3,103 |
3,705 |
19percent |
2,851 |
-23percent |
2,708 |
-5percent |
2,833 |
5percent |
2,903 |
2percent |
| Criminal (Other than Investigation) |
52,332 |
53,904 |
3percent |
50,412 |
-6percent |
52,650 |
4percent |
86,642 |
65percent |
121,615 |
40percent |
| Appellate Courts |
66,817 |
60,032 |
-10percent |
61,191 |
2percent |
59,474 |
-3percent |
65,757 |
11percent |
63,187 |
-4percent |
| Misdemeanor Courts |
551,039 |
669,559 |
22percent |
786,261 |
17percent |
696,607 |
-11percent |
676,361 |
-3percent |
614,246 |
-9percent |
| Appellate Misdemeanor Court |
37,563 |
30,597 |
-19percent |
26,604 |
-13percent |
26,520 |
0percent |
28,856 |
9percent |
28,786 |
0percent |
| Administrative Court |
20,149 |
18,681 |
-7percent |
19,274 |
3percent |
19,180 |
0percent |
18,666 |
-3percent |
21,285 |
14percent |
| Commercial Courts |
83,021 |
92,151 |
11percent |
95,152 |
3percent |
104,080 |
9percent |
127,720 |
23percent |
140,082 |
10percent |
| Appellate Commercial Court |
11,347 |
11,315 |
0percent |
12,805 |
13percent |
12,470 |
-3percent |
15,446 |
24percent |
16,993 |
10percent |
| Supreme Court of Cassation |
7,396 |
19,109 |
158percent |
12,457 |
-35percent |
17,682 |
42percent |
13,129 |
-26percent |
19,038 |
45percent |
| TOTAL |
1,793,212 |
2,087,332 |
16percent |
2,953,921 |
42percent |
2,335,760 |
-21percent |
2,298,870 |
-2percent |
2,268,769 |
-1percent |
Source: SCC Data
Figure 28: Total Dispositions by Court Type from 2014 to 2019
Source: SCC Data
- The sudden peak in dispositions of Basic Courts in 2016
was caused by an almost three-fold increase in resolved enforcement
cases. This extraordinary result arose from the passage of the
Law on Enforcement and Security , which produced a
dramatic number of dismissals of enforcement cases, as discussed above,
particularly in 2016 (see Box 5). If enforcement cases are not
considered, Basic Courts disposed of only five percent more cases in
2016 than in 2015.
- Probate cases entrusted to public notaries inflated the
disposition numbers for Basic Courts. The SCC mentioned in its
2019 Annual Report that Basic Courts delegated 122,708
of the 134,226 probate cases they had received to public notaries, and
the only work done by the courts was processing the delegations. The
delegations represented around 40 percent of the Basic Courts’ 290,623
civil non-litigious cases in 2019. For more on the activities of
notaries, see the discussion in section 1.3.4 Public Notaries: A
Promising Start below.
- The limited issues involved in many cases handled by
Higher, Commercial, and Misdemeanor Courts contributed to the higher
number of dispositions in these courts. Repetitive issues were
notable in military reservist cases in Higher Courts, commercial
offenses in Commercial Courts, and commercial, traffic, and misdemeanor
warrant execution cases in Misdemeanor Courts.
- Available data does not explain the decreasing number of
dispositions in the Administrative Court through 2018. The
Court’s caseload increased through 2018, but its dispositions declined,
even though its number of judges remained fairly stable through those
years. In 2019 the Court had seven fewer
judges than it had in 2018, and the incoming caseload declined by 11
percent while dispositions grew by 14 percent. However, even this
increase in dispositions was not enough to stop the accumulation of more
pending cases.
Box 10: Innovative Ideas for Better Caseload Distribution
Dispositions per Judge
- Dispositions per judge, measured by dividing the number
of disposed of cases by the number of judges, displayed substantial
variations over time. In absolute numbers, Basic and
Misdemeanor Courts had the most significant differences in dispositions
among their judges, while the most stable dispositions per judge were
recorded in the Appellate Misdemeanor Court. Dispositions per judge
continuously increased in the Higher Courts and the Commercial Courts.
In the SCC, dispositions per judge varied from year to year, while in
the Administrative Court they declined sharply in 2018 only to recover
again in 2019. Figure 29 below gives an overview.
Figure 29: Average Dispositions per Judge from 2015 to 2019
Source: SCC Data and WB Calculations
- Dispositions per judge in Basic Courts peaked in 2016 to
1,322, due to the high number of dismissed enforcement cases.
In other observed years, the average number of dispositions varied
within less dramatic values. Without enforcement cases, the averages of
Basic Court reported dispositions per judge would have been far lower
but still increased consistently (452 in 2015, 474 in 2016, 509 in 2017,
565 in 2018, and 589 in 2019).
- As with the averages for caseload per judge, there was no
correlation between court size and the disposition per judge ratio, as
displayed in Table 6 below. Of 66 analyzed courts, 23 percent
were within the average values, 38 percent were above average, and 39
percent were below average. Belgrade’s Basic Courts fell into the
above-average category, together with other courts of various
sizes.
Table 6: Average Dispositions per Judge in Basic Courts in 2019
| Lebane |
7,437 |
5 |
1,487 |
Pirot |
10,514 |
12 |
876 |
| Aleksinac |
12,669 |
9 |
1,408 |
Despotovac |
6,796 |
8 |
850 |
| Third Belgrade |
53,229 |
38 |
1,401 |
Prokuplje |
15,221 |
18 |
846 |
| First Belgrade |
148,671 |
115 |
1,293 |
Brus |
4,093 |
5 |
819 |
| Knjazevac |
6,437 |
5 |
1,287 |
Jagodina |
14,661 |
18 |
815 |
| Mladenovac |
18,021 |
14 |
1,287 |
Krusevac |
20,298 |
25 |
812 |
| Kragujevac |
54,945 |
43 |
1,278 |
Novi Pazar |
12,155 |
15 |
810 |
| Sombor |
22,603 |
18 |
1,256 |
Raska |
3,889 |
5 |
778 |
| Pozega |
9,900 |
8 |
1,238 |
Petrovac on Mlava |
5,289 |
7 |
756 |
| Uzice |
20,958 |
17 |
1,233 |
Ub |
4,502 |
6 |
750 |
| Leskovac |
40,376 |
33 |
1,224 |
Surdulica |
9,513 |
13 |
732 |
| Bor |
14,197 |
12 |
1,183 |
Obrenovac |
5,808 |
8 |
726 |
| Kraljevo |
15,202 |
13 |
1,169 |
Senta |
5,744 |
8 |
718 |
| Subotica |
23,155 |
20 |
1,158 |
Lazarevac |
7,163 |
10 |
716 |
| Nis |
70,202 |
64 |
1,097 |
Backa Palanka |
6,430 |
9 |
714 |
| Second Belgrade |
48,413 |
45 |
1,076 |
Gornji Milanovac |
4,281 |
6 |
714 |
| Sremska Mitrovica |
9,647 |
9 |
1,072 |
Mionica |
3,527 |
5 |
705 |
| Vrbas |
16,069 |
15 |
1,071 |
Vrsac |
8,940 |
13 |
688 |
| Velika Plana |
12,796 |
12 |
1,066 |
Paracin |
14,248 |
21 |
678 |
| Zrenjanin |
22,382 |
21 |
1,066 |
Ruma |
8,080 |
12 |
673 |
| Loznica |
14,621 |
14 |
1,044 |
Zajecar |
12,689 |
19 |
668 |
| Veliko Gradiste |
4,163 |
4 |
1,041 |
Ivanjica |
6,406 |
10 |
641 |
| Prijepolje |
7,249 |
7 |
1,036 |
Pancevo |
15,953 |
25 |
638 |
| Kikinda |
11,370 |
11 |
1,034 |
Stara Pazova |
12,512 |
20 |
626 |
| Kursumlija |
4,933 |
5 |
987 |
Bujanovac |
6,017 |
10 |
602 |
| Becej |
6,802 |
7 |
972 |
Novi Sad |
51,869 |
92 |
564 |
| Trstenik |
5,811 |
6 |
969 |
Sjenica |
2,757 |
5 |
551 |
| Vranje |
24,643 |
26 |
948 |
Negotin |
6,525 |
12 |
544 |
| Cacak |
19,563 |
21 |
932 |
Sid |
2,858 |
6 |
476 |
| Arandjelovac |
10,920 |
12 |
910 |
Priboj |
2,369 |
5 |
474 |
| Pozarevac |
22,736 |
25 |
909 |
Valjevo |
11,832 |
27 |
438 |
| Sabac |
26,146 |
29 |
902 |
Majdanpek |
1,682 |
5 |
336 |
| Smederevo |
17,922 |
20 |
896 |
Dimitrovgrad |
1,584 |
5 |
317 |
Source: SCC Data and WB Calculation
- Misdemeanor Courts produced an average of 1,207 disposed
cases per judge in 2019, which was a decrease of 22 percent from 2016
although there were many variations among courts. This 22
percent drop occurred even though these courts overall had the same
numbers of judges in 2019 as they did in 2016, after two years of
considerably fewer judges. Dispositions per judge in
Misdemeanor Courts peaked temporarily in 2016 as judges worked to
resolve an increased inflow of traffic, commercial, and misdemeanor
warrant execution cases. In contrast, average dispositions for the
Appellate Misdemeanor Court were relatively stable overall: 478 cases
resolved per judge In 2015, 429 in 2016, 457 in 2017, 465 in 2018, and
496 in 2019.
- The Higher Courts’ disposition per judge increased
steadily in 2015 and 2016, with jumps of roughly 40 percent in 2017 and
2018. These judges each disposed of 350 cases on average in
2015, 370 in 2016, 528 in 2017, 730 cases in 2018, and 749 in 2019, even
though the total number of judges varied by only five percent over the
same period. The 2017 disposition per judge increased primarily due to
cases filed by military reservists that flooded the Higher Courts. In
2018 and 2019, this ratio was heavily influenced by ‘KR’ cases (see para
30).
- Disposition per judge in Commercial Courts grew
consistently, with notable increases in 2017, 2018, and 2019 despite
fluctuating numbers of judges. From 2015 to 2017, Commercial
Courts lost 13 judges and then gained 15 in 2018, only to lose 10 in
2019. The average number of disposed of cases for Commercial Court
judges was 576 cases in 2015, 602 cases in 2016, 708 in 2017, 788 in
2018, and 922 in 2019. The increases were triggered by a rising incoming
caseload of commercial offenses, which involved relatively limited
issues. Concurrently, the Appellate Commercial Court had 32 judges in
2015, 41 judges in 2018, and 31 in 2019. Their average disposition per
judge ranged from a minimum of 312 in 2017 to a maximum of 548 cases in
2019.
- Appellate Courts exhibited lower dispositions per judge
than the SCC from 2015 to 2019 since the SCC had higher incoming
caseloads. Similar situations can be seen in comparator
jurisdictions (e.g. in Montenegro). Nevertheless, this calls for greater
attention, possibly, the SCC’s jurisdiction needs to be revised because
too many cases reach it or the caseload is inflated by simple matters.
The numbers per judge for the SCC were 503 in 2015, 337 in 2016, 453 in
2017, 320 in 2018 and 577 in 2019. For Appellate Courts, the average
dispositions per judge were 267 in 2015, 272 in 2016, 261 in 2017, 304
in 2018, and 318 in 2019.
Court Rewards Program
- The SCC’s competitive Court Rewards Program, which put
Serbia at the forefront of innovation among European judiciaries in
incentivizing court performance, deserves to be expanded to recognize
the benefits of more initiatives by lower courts. The Rewards
Program was included in the Supreme Court of Cassation’s Court Book of
Rules to motivate courts and the people working in them to improve court
operations. Launched by the SCC in 2016, the Rewards Program had gone
through four cycles by the end of 2019. There was no competition in 2020
presumably because of the difficulties all courts had in executing even
routine operations in the face of Covid-19 concerns and
restrictions.
- Monetary prizes were set at a level the SCC hoped would
attract entries and which could be used for the benefit of winning
courts as a whole. The awards also bestowed recognition and
prestige on all entrants. Winning courts could choose to spend their
prize money on ICT hardware, office equipment, or materials for the
beautification of the court.
- The Program appropriately focused on solving some of the
most troublesome issues facing the Misdemeanor, Basic, Higher and
Commercial Courts by making awards for the “most
considerable improvement in backlog reduction” and the “largest
improvement in the number of resolved cases per judge.” Winners
have been drawn from each group of courts, as shown in Table 7 below. By
focusing on ‘most improved player’ awards, the program has aimed to
motivate lower-performing courts to improve their operations and lift
average performance across the judiciary. By measuring performance on a
‘per judge’ basis for the one award, the program controls for variation
in court size, so smaller courts with fewer judges have an equal chance
of success.
Table 7: Court Rewards Program Laureates from 2016 to 2019
| 2016 |
1st |
Basic Court in Nis |
First Basic Court in Belgrade |
| 2nd |
Third Basic Court in Belgrade |
Basic Court in Leskovac |
| 3rd |
Second Basic Court in Belgrade
Basic Court in Lebane |
Basic Court in Novi Sad |
| 2017 |
1st |
Commercial Court in Belgrade |
Higher Court in Leskovac |
| 2nd |
Basic Court in Lazarevac |
Higher Court in Nis |
| 3rd |
Basic Court in Ivanjica
Basic Court in Bujanovac |
Third Basic Court in Belgrade
Higher Court in Kruševac |
| 2018 |
1st |
Basic Court in Kragujevac |
Higher Court in Belgrade |
| 2nd |
Basic Court in Nis |
Higher Court in Vranje |
| 3rd |
Commercial Court in Novi Sad |
Misdemeanor Court in Novi Sad |
| 2019 |
1st |
Commercial Court in Belgrade |
Commercial Court in Leskovac |
| 2nd |
Basic Court in Krusevac |
Commercial Court in Nis |
| 3rd |
Higher Court in Belgrade |
Higher Court in Valjevo |
Source: SCC website
Timeliness in Case
Processing
- A crucial aspect of judicial performance, timeliness, is
tightly connected to the right to a fair trial
and a key EU concern for Chapter 23 of Serbia’s pre-accession
negotiations. In this study, timeliness is addressed through
four indicators; pending (carried over) cases, congestion rate, case age
structure, and disposition time. According to the 2014 Judicial
Functional Review, the Serbian judiciary’s timeliness results were mixed
but improved from 2010 to 2013. Serbia’s pending stock
was high in comparison to the EU through 2013, comprised mostly of older
cases since judges primarily disposed of newer ones. Congestion rates
remained high at around 1.41, particularly in Basic, Misdemeanor, and
Commercial Courts, and lists of aging cases were not produced or
analyzed routinely. Time to disposition varied markedly by case and
court type (e.g., 98 days in Higher Courts and 736 days in Basic
Courts). While the 2014 Judicial Functional Review noted that in civil
and commercial cases Serbia produced disposition times in line with EU
averages, in enforcement cases the times were far worse than elsewhere
in Europe. The disposition times calculated by the FR team based on
CEPEJ methodology were found to be optimistic since high appeal rates
and recycling of cases through retrials after appeals further prolonged
the final resolution of disputes, which was not reflected in the results
of the disposition time indicator.
- Timeliness of case processing, determined by the CEPEJ
disposition time indicator, continuously improved from 2014 to 2019,
although results in some areas were still not in the acceptable
range. Disposition times in Serbian courts decreased from 580
days in 2014 to 267 days in 2019, but with remarkable variations by case
and court type. High appeal rates and recycling of cases remained an
issue. The total congestion ratio of courts
in Serbia improved considerably and dropped to 0.73 in 2019: pending
case stock dropped by more than 40 percent from 2014 to 2019, from
2,849,360 cases at the end of 2014 to 1,656,645 cases at the end of
2019. In 2020, the total disposition time of Serbian courts grew
slightly to 274 days, while the congestion ratio increased to 0.75. With
1,510,472 cases in 2020, the total pending stock of Serbian courts
declined further by nine percent. In line with 2014 Judicial Functional
Review recommendations, aging lists of pending cases were introduced to
SCC statistical reports to monitor timeliness. Starting in 2014, the
lists were regularly monitored by court management throughout the period
covered by this FR. However, the primary review of the lists was done
through the implementation of the National Backlog Reduction Programme,
which did not cover all the courts in Serbia (see Box 12
below).
Figure 30:Overall Disposition Times of Serbian Courts from 2014 to
2020
Number of Pending
(Carried-Over) Cases
- The pending cases indicator compares the number of
unresolved cases carried over from one year to the next: these cases are
also referred to as pending stock or backlogged cases. The
existence of some pending cases is unavoidable as no court can resolve
all cases entering each year – some cases enter the system too late or
are too complex to be disposed of before the year’s end. Pending cases
become problematic when their numbers increase from year to year and
include many older cases. Pending cases are sometimes described as
backlogged, but in Serbia and many other countries, ‘backlog’ refers
only to pending cases over a certain age.
- Serbia’s courts did not tackle their non-enforcement
pending stock effectively, even though the overall pending stock
decreased by 42 percent from 2014 to 2019. In 2019, the total
of pending cases was 1,656,645. As shown in Figure 31 below, Serbia’s
pending stock started declining sharply in 2016, and this continued
through 2019. But if enforcement cases in Basic Courts were excluded
from the calculation, the total pending stock of the country’s courts
would have increased each year from 2014 to 2017, by a total of 20
percent. Only in 2018 did pending stock decrease by eight percent, but
it increased again by three percent in 2019. The non-enforcement pending
stock data for 2020 were not included in this analysis.
Figure 31: Pending Cases at the End of Year from 2010 to 2020
Source: SCC Data
- Basic and Misdemeanor Courts held 88 percent of all
unresolved cases at the end of 2019. Basic Courts held 56
percent, while 32 percent of the unresolved cases were in the
Misdemeanor Courts. In the same year, the lowest number of unresolved
cases was recorded in the Appellate Misdemeanor Court with 2,711 cases,
which was only 0.16 percent of all unresolved cases in Serbia.
- By the end of 2019, 621,674 or 38 percent of all
unresolved cases in Serbian courts were enforcement cases in Basic
Courts - a reduction of 1,313,851 cases compared to 2014.
Enforcement cases comprised 67 percent of Basic Courts’ unresolved cases
in 2019, compared to 86 percent in 2014. Expectedly, most of the
reduction, or 825,587 cases, occurred in
Belgrade’s First Basic Court followed by Basic Courts in Kragujevac,
Cacak, Nis, Novi Sad, Mladenovac, and Krusevac, with over 30,000 fewer
pending enforcement cases each. Conversely, the Second and Third Basic
Courts in Belgrade increased their enforcement pending stock by 76,459
cases and 63,694 cases, respectively, through the migration of cases
from Belgrade’s First Basic Court to these courts.
- The second-largest pending stock belonged to the
Misdemeanor Courts, largely due to the execution of warrants.
From 2014 to 2019, Misdemeanor Courts increased their unresolved cases
by 12 percent, or 95,000 cases.
Table 8:Unresolved Cases at the End of Year by Court and Case Type
from 2014 to 2019
| Basic Courts |
2,239,927 |
2,130,369 |
1,265,138 |
1,099,895 |
965,939 |
922,777 |
| Civil Litigious Cases |
183,727 |
207,654 |
210,784 |
191,444 |
178,045 |
203,359 |
| Civil Non-Litigious Cases |
63,120 |
73,923 |
69,391 |
59,853 |
57,941 |
61,591 |
| Criminal Investigation |
809 |
273 |
136 |
50 |
41 |
31 |
| Criminal (Other than Investigation) |
56,746 |
46,510 |
40,217 |
36,783 |
36,860 |
36,122 |
| Enforcement |
1,935,525 |
1,802,009 |
944,610 |
811,765 |
693,052 |
621,674 |
| Higher Courts |
36,308 |
43,586 |
61,429 |
100,326 |
95,648 |
89,446 |
| Civil Litigious Cases |
22,736 |
29,142 |
50,482 |
90,520 |
84,188 |
76,254 |
| Civil Non-Litigious Cases |
1,355 |
5,023 |
1,235 |
996 |
2,163 |
3,643 |
| Criminal Investigation |
1,573 |
977 |
836 |
883 |
942 |
1,138 |
| Criminal (Other than Investigation) |
10,644 |
8,444 |
8,876 |
7,927 |
8,355 |
8,411 |
| Appellate Courts |
20,435 |
15,958 |
14,727 |
15,240 |
15,429 |
13,488 |
| Misdemeanor Courts |
438,969 |
586,433 |
599,224 |
594,277 |
515,581 |
533,968 |
| Appellate Misdemeanor Court |
2,656 |
1,620 |
1,627 |
1,517 |
2,329 |
2,711 |
| Administrative Court |
24,262 |
25,896 |
28,176 |
30,750 |
37,514 |
38,769 |
| Commercial Courts |
76,686 |
67,708 |
59,099 |
54,927 |
55,891 |
40,628 |
| Appellate Commercial Court |
6,535 |
9,734 |
8,600 |
8,342 |
6,728 |
6,778 |
| Supreme Court of Cassation |
3,582 |
5,315 |
5,905 |
5,812 |
6,521 |
8,080 |
| TOTAL |
2,849,360 |
2,886,619 |
2,043,925 |
1,911,086 |
1,701,580 |
1,656,645 |
Source: SCC Data
- The transfer of most investigation cases from courts to
prosecutors left a stock of pending cases in affected courts.
Responsibility for most criminal investigations moved from Basic and
Higher Courts starting in late 2013, but some of the investigation cases
were still pending in the courts from 2014 to 2019. At the end of 2014,
Basic Courts had 809 investigations in pending stock and only 31 in
2019. In Higher Courts, 1,573 pending investigations in 2014 declined to
942 in 2018 but grew again to 1,138 in 2019.
- The transfer of investigation cases from courts to PPOs
reduced the inventory of the courts but created a new backlog for
prosecutors, which they were still struggling to process in late
2020. The transfer was based in part on the assumption that
having prosecutors responsible for investigations would make it easier
for judges to conduct trials with open minds about the case. It also was
expected that the transfer of responsibility would reduce the overall
costs and processing times for investigations. However, this Functional
Review cannot confirm those expected results occurred: see the
discussion at Chapter 2. Efficiency, Timeliness and Productivity of
Prosecutors’ Offices for additional details on this issue.
- The pending stock of non-investigation criminal cases
gradually declined in Basic Courts from 56,746 cases in 2014 to 36,122
in 2019, whereas in Higher Courts, it remained stable at around 8,000
cases.
Congestion Ratios
- As this FR already has explained, a congestion ratio is a
number of unresolved cases at the end of one year divided by the number
of resolved cases during the same year. This indicator
illustrates that having a larger number of carry-over cases is not
always intrinsically bad. Courts should work to keep the ratio well
under 1.00, meaning that pending stock is far less than the annual
outflow. However, courts that are congested with enforcement cases tend
to be congested generally, and they present a specific challenge to
court presidents, who need to juggle their resources to correct what
they can. If they have judges put more emphasis on one case type, such
as reducing the number of enforcement cases, others will suffer.
Presumably, most court presidents try to spread resources evenly, so
most case types are covered equally well or equally poorly.
- The total congestion ratio of courts in Serbia improved
tremendously during the period under review, ending at 0.73 in 2019. As with
other indicators, enforcement cases influenced this trend significantly.
A vast pending stock of idle enforcement cases caused undesirable ratios
throughout the period displayed in Figure 32 below. Although Serbia’s
ratio improved considerably, as this FR and its predecessor have noted,
the congestion ratio is not the only indicator examining how efficiently
the court system to handles its workload. In 2020, the overall
congestion ratio increased slightly to 0.75.
Figure 32: Congestion Ratio from 2010 to 2020
Source: SCC Data and WB Calculations
- As Table 9 displays, there was considerable variation for
their congestion ratios among and within different types of
courts. Basic Courts and the Administrative Court were the only
types of courts which did not have ratios below 1.00 for the entire
period under review, but the results improved markedly for Basic Courts
starting in 2016, which saw the biggest disposition of enforcement cases
from the Basic Courts. The Appellate Misdemeanor Court, the Appellate
Courts and the SCC produced favorable congestion ratios (up to 0.5) over
the five years, while Table 10 also shows there were significant
differences by case type, even in the courts with more favorable ratios
overall.
Table 9: Congestion ratios by Court Type and Case Type from 2014 to
2019
| Basic Courts |
2.47 |
2.00 |
0.70 |
0.90 |
0.88 |
0.83 |
| Civil Litigious Cases |
0.99 |
0.79 |
0.75 |
0.74 |
0.71 |
0.83 |
| Civil Non-Litigious Cases |
0.34 |
0.34 |
0.30 |
0.24 |
0.21 |
0.21 |
| Criminal Investigation |
0.20 |
0.26 |
0.26 |
0.23 |
0.30 |
0.23 |
| Criminal (Other than Investigation) |
0.43 |
0.34 |
0.29 |
0.27 |
0.23 |
0.24 |
| Enforcement |
4.88 |
4.05 |
0.81 |
1.40 |
1.68 |
1.47 |
| Higher Courts |
0.33 |
0.36 |
0.49 |
0.58 |
0.37 |
0.35 |
| Civil Litigious Cases |
0.46 |
0.54 |
0.81 |
0.82 |
0.53 |
0.67 |
| Civil Non-Litigious Cases |
0.31 |
0.55 |
0.13 |
0.13 |
0.22 |
0.22 |
| Criminal Investigation |
0.51 |
0.26 |
0.29 |
0.33 |
0.33 |
0.39 |
| Criminal (Other than Investigation) |
0.20 |
0.16 |
0.18 |
0.15 |
0.10 |
0.07 |
| Appellate Courts |
0.31 |
0.27 |
0.24 |
0.26 |
0.23 |
0.21 |
| Misdemeanor Courts |
0.80 |
0.88 |
0.76 |
0.85 |
0.76 |
0.87 |
| Appellate Misdemeanor Court |
0.07 |
0.05 |
0.06 |
0.06 |
0.08 |
0.09 |
| Administrative Court |
1.20 |
1.39 |
1.46 |
1.60 |
2.01 |
1.82 |
| Commercial Courts |
0.92 |
0.73 |
0.62 |
0.53 |
0.44 |
0.29 |
| Appellate Commercial Court |
0.58 |
0.86 |
0.67 |
0.67 |
0.44 |
0.40 |
| Supreme Court of Cassation |
0.48 |
0.28 |
0.47 |
0.33 |
0.50 |
0.42 |
| TOTAL |
1.59 |
1.38 |
0.69 |
0.82 |
0.74 |
0.73 |
Source: SCC Data and WB Calculations
Figure 33:Congestion Ratios by Court Type from 2014 to 2019
Source: SCC Data and WB Calculations
- While Basic Courts had better ratio results starting in
2016, the results among them were very uneven, and data did not indicate
the cause of the discrepancies. The Basic Courts’ overall
ratios were below 1.0 with 0.70 in 2016, 0.90 in 2017, 0.88 in 2018, and
0.83 in 2019. In total, 46 Basic Courts or 70 percent displayed ratios
of 0.50 or below in 2019; the lowest congestion ratio (0.10) was
recorded in Basic Court in Dimitrovgrad, which had five judges. However,
the size of a court was not the determining factor for the 2019 ratio
results: the Basic Court in Novi Sad (a large court with approximately
100 judges) had a congestion ratio of 0.46, the Basic Court in Obrenovac
with eight judges was the only court with a ratio between 1.00 and 2.00,
and Belgrade’s three Basic Courts, were the only ones with ratios over
2.00.
- Within Basic Courts, congestion ratios also varied by
case type, as displayed in Figure 34 below. Congestion ratios
of civil litigious and non-litigious cases generally improved, although
of the two categories, only the non-litigious cases were in the target
zone. Criminal investigation ratios were stable, and other criminal
cases were improving, although both sets of ratios were well under 0.50.
The congestion of enforcement cases improved substantially from 4.88 in
2014 to 0.81 in 2016. However, it deteriorated again to 1.40 in 2017,
1.68 in 2018, and 1.47 in 2019.
Figure 34:Congestion Ratios of Basic Courts by Case Type from 2014 to
2019
Source: SCC Data and WB Calculations
- Increasing congestion in Higher Courts in 2016 and 2017
was related primarily to civil litigious cases. While criminal,
criminal investigation cases, and civil non-litigious cases showed low
congestion (with some exceptions displayed in Figure 35 below),
congestion ratios of civil litigious cases grew, almost doubling from
2014 to 2017. In 2018, the congestion ratio of civil litigious cases
declined to 0.53, only to grow again to 0.67 in the following
year.
Figure 35: Congestion Ratios of Higher Courts by Case Type from 2014
to 2019
Source: SCC Data and WB Calculations
- Appellate Courts maintained low congestion ratios for
both civil and criminal cases. Congestion ratios of civil cases
even declined, as presented in Figure 36 below.
Figure 36:Congestion Ratios of Appellate Courts by Case Type from
2014 to 2019
Source: SCC Data and WB Calculations
- Congestion ratios consistently decreased in the
Commercial Courts from 0.92 in 2014 to 0.29 in 2019, showing they
successfully handled their pending stock even though they had rising
incoming caseloads. There were similar results for the
Appellate Commercial Court.
- Misdemeanor Courts remained relatively stable, with
ratios ranging from a maximum of 0.88 in 2015 to a minimum of 0.76 in
2016 and 2018.
Age Structure
- The age structure of pending cases indicates how courts
prioritize cases for processing and whether they are disposing of a
significant number of new cases relatively quickly, while more
complicated cases are left in part of the pending stock that may never
be resolved. This behavior is particularly apt to occur when
judges are assessed through productivity quotas, which are explained
below in Box 11. The SCC reports used as data sources for this FR
provided the total numbers of unresolved each year, and the number of
disposed of backlogged cases per year and
by court type. The age of unresolved cases was further disaggregated by
the following categories: three to five years, five to ten years, and
more than ten years. This disaggregation by age was unavailable for
disposed of, backlogged cases.
Box 11: Judicial Production Quotas
- By increasing the threshold for backlogged cases from two
to three years in 2019, the SCC instantly reduced the number of
backlogged unresolved cases by approximately 100,000 or more than
one-tenth. Serbia also eliminated the category of “aged” (in
the court for more than nine months) in unresolved criminal
investigations. This purely administrative change meant a considerable
portion of cases that had been in the system for more than two but less
than three years were excluded from the reach of the National Backlog
Reduction Programme.
- In February 2021, the SCC presented a completely new
National Backlog Reduction Programme for the period from 2021 to
2025.
- While the SCC’s willingness to implement the National
Backlog Reduction Programme was laudable, the Programme
did not meet the original goals set originally, nor the 2020 goals in
the 2016 amendments. At the outset, the goal was to reduce the
backlog by the end of 2018 from 1.7 million to 355,000 cases. However,
781,000 backlogged cases were still pending at the end of 2018.
According to the SCC analysis in the new Programme for 2021-2025, the reasons that the goals of the
2016 amendments were not met included a very high caseload ins Belgrade
courts and appellate courts; an unexpected increase in the number of
incoming cases; the failure to fill vacant judicial positions, and
especially, the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the end of 2020,
regardless of the pandemic, the Programme met its objectives for
enforcement cases since fewer pending enforcement cases remained
compared to the number projected in the Programme. The SCC reported that
on 20 June 2020 there were 526,869 backlogged cases remaining in all
matters, which was roughly 50 percent more than the Programme had
envisioned.
Box 12: National Backlog Reduction Programme Measures
- Despite the National Backlog Reduction Programme, the
number and the age of cases and the system’s latest productivity results
make it is clear that the backlog numbers will not improve
rapidly. Serbian courts still are burdened with many backlogged
cases, of which many may well violate Article 6 of the ECHR and other
international standards. The SCC’s Aging
List of Unresolved Cases in Table 10 displays the composition and age
structure of unresolved cases from the date of each case’s initial act.
By the end of 2019, there were 255,272 cases older than 10 years across
the system, which represented 41 percent of all backlogged cases. The
majority of backlogged cases (44 percent) were five to 10 years old –
272,964 of them.
Table 10: Aging List of Unresolved Cases by Court Type and Case Type
in 2019
|
Total |
0-3 years |
3-5 years |
5-10 years |
Over 10 years |
| Basic Courts |
| Civil Total |
264,950 |
239,180 |
14,891 |
9,145 |
1,734 |
| Civil Litigious |
203,359 |
180,589 |
13,260 |
8,036 |
1,474 |
| Civil Non-Litigious |
61,591 |
58,591 |
1,631 |
1,109 |
260 |
| Criminal Investigation |
31 |
1 |
18 |
12 |
0 |
| Criminal (Other than Investigation) |
36,122 |
33,731 |
1,480 |
807 |
104 |
| Enforcement |
621,674 |
88,723 |
42,109 |
240,492 |
250,350 |
| Basic Courts Total |
922,777 |
361,635 |
58,498 |
250,456 |
252,188 |
| 56percent |
39percent |
6percent |
27percent |
27percent |
| Higher Courts |
| Civil Total |
79,897 |
55,585 |
16,449 |
6,675 |
1,188 |
| Civil Litigious |
76,254 |
51,970 |
16,434 |
6,665 |
1,185 |
| Civil Non-Litigious |
3,643 |
3,615 |
15 |
10 |
3 |
| Criminal Investigation |
1,138 |
1,123 |
11 |
2 |
2 |
| Criminal (Other than Investigation) |
8,411 |
7,208 |
628 |
514 |
61 |
| Higher Courts Total |
89,446 |
63,916 |
17,088 |
7,191 |
1,251 |
| 5percent |
71percent |
19percent |
8percent |
1percent |
| Appellate Courts |
| Civil |
12,973 |
6,407 |
3,244 |
2,556 |
766 |
| Criminal (Other than Investigation) |
515 |
293 |
82 |
113 |
27 |
| Appellate Courts Total |
13,488 |
6,700 |
3,326 |
2,669 |
793 |
| 1percent |
50percent |
25percent |
20percent |
6percent |
| Commercial Courts |
| Commercial |
40,628 |
28,218 |
4,533 |
7,559 |
318 |
| 2percent |
69percent |
11percent |
19percent |
0.78percent |
| Appellate Commercial Court |
| Commercial |
6,778 |
5,187 |
1,271 |
288 |
32 |
| 0.41percent |
77percent |
19percent |
4percent |
0.47percent |
| Misdemeanor Courts |
| Misdemeanor |
533,968 |
525,522 |
5,639 |
2,807 |
0 |
| 32percent |
98percent |
1percent |
0.53percent |
0.00percent |
| Appellate Misdemeanor Court |
| Misdemeanor |
2,711 |
2,589 |
122 |
0 |
0 |
| 0.16percent |
95percent |
5percent |
0percent |
0percent |
| Administrative Court |
| Administrative |
38,769 |
38,031 |
731 |
7 |
0 |
| 2percent |
98percent |
2percent |
0.02percent |
0percent |
| Supreme Court of Cassation |
| Civil |
7,664 |
3,107 |
1,880 |
1,987 |
690 |
| Criminal (Other than Investigation) |
300 |
300 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
| Administrative |
116 |
116 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
| Supreme Court of Cassation Total |
8,080 |
3,523 |
1,880 |
1,987 |
690 |
| 0.5percent |
44percent |
23percent |
25percent |
9percent |
| TOTAL |
1,656,645 |
1,035,321 |
93,088 |
272,964 |
255,272 |
Source: SCC Data
- Ninety-five percent of all backlogged unresolved cases in
Basic Courts in 2019 were enforcement cases. The system also
was burdened with many backlogged civil and criminal cases. In 2019,
8,036 of the civil litigious cases were five to 10 years old and 1,474
were older than 10 years. There were still 12 investigations that had
been pending for five to 10 years.
- Progress in the backlog reduction of Basic Courts’ civil
cases, both litigious and non-litigious, varied over the years, but
there were advancements. For instance, the number of unresolved
civil cases older than three years was reduced by three percent from
26,673 in 2018 to 25,770 in 2019.
- In 2019 the number of cases older than three years dropped by 10
percent (66,000 cases) on a national level, but the numbers of
backlogged enforcement cases were still growing at alarming
rates. The most substantial reduction by far was in Basic
Courts, where there were 903 fewer pending backlogged civil cases and
68,204 fewer backlogged enforcement cases, which represented reductions
of three and 11 percent, respectively. However, in 2018 there were
190,000 enforcement cases older than 10 years and this number increased
to 250,000 in 2019, an increase of 31 percent. Higher Courts increased
the number of backlogged pending cases by more than 27 percent (5,000
cases) between 2018 and 2019, Misdemeanor Courts increased them by 61
percent (3,000 cases), and the SCC by 28 percent (1,000 cases).
Backlogged cases decreased in the Appellate Courts and the Commercial
Courts by 14 percent (1,000 cases) and 32 percent (6,000 cases),
respectively.
- The situation was better in other court types, but there
were still many severely backlogged cases that needed to be addressed
immediately. The biggest portion of backlogged cases in both
Higher and Appellate Courts were civil cases, at 95 and 97 percent,
respectively. Around one-fifth of all pending commercial cases were five
to 10 years old (7,559), while in the SCC, 59 percent of all pending
cases were backlogged civil cases (4,557). There were no criminal or
administrative cases in the SCC that had been in the system long enough
to be considered backlogged.
- While Misdemeanor Courts were included in the aging
lists, different standards applied to them because of the very short
statutes of limitations pertaining to their cases. In
misdemeanor cases, the general statute of limitations requires the
initiation of action within one year of the event, and cases generally
have to be resolved within two years from the event. Most cases
unresolved after two years must be dismissed, although longer deadlines
apply to specific misdemeanors such as customs and tax.
- In contrast to their treatment of unresolved backlogged
cases, the SCC’s reports did not disaggregate resolved backlogged cases
by their age, although average times calculated on a theoretical level
can be deceptive. Aging lists presented as annual dispositions
by the age of the case would give a better picture of whether the courts
were resolving only newer cases. The failure to provide the age of the
case for backlogged cases that had been resolved meant the SCC could not
determine how long it had taken for an old – or even very old – case to
end.
- In 2019, nine percent of all cases disposed of across the
system were backlogged, which was a reduction of four percentage points
over 2018. During 2014 courts disposed of 305,519 backlogged
cases; the figures were 495,708 for 2017, 311,018 in 2018, and 2019 in
214,234. The 2019 results were affected to some extent by the change
from two to three years in the definition of backlogged cases, as
reported above.
Table 11: Disposed ‘Old’ Cases by Court Type in 2019
| Supreme Court of Cassation |
19,038 |
8,607 |
45percent |
-13percent |
| Appellate Courts |
63,187 |
17,701 |
28percent |
-12percent |
| Higher Courts |
254,759 |
31,610 |
12percent |
-2percent |
| Basic Courts |
1,110,393 |
130,156 |
12percent |
-7percent |
| Administrative Court |
21,285 |
1,862 |
9percent |
-23percent |
| Appellate Commercial Court |
16,993 |
4,346 |
26percent |
-17percent |
| Commercial Courts |
140,082 |
12,405 |
9percent |
-2percent |
| Appellate Misdemeanor Court |
28,786 |
999 |
3percent |
-7percent |
| Misdemeanor Courts |
614,246 |
6,548 |
1percent |
0percent |
| TOTAL |
2,268,769 |
214,234 |
9percent |
-4percent |
Source: SCC Data
Box 13: The Law on Protection of the Right to a Trial Within a
Reasonable Time
Disposition Time an the
SATURN Method
- As Serbian statistics still do not provide data on actual
disposition times, an alternative indicator developed by CEPEJ under the
SATURN method is used in this section to estimate the average times of
dispositions. The formula compares
cases resolved to those carried-over during one year. The SATURN
methodology rests on a purely theoretical assumption of a ‘FIFO’ (First
In, First Out) approach to case resolution. Real times, as experienced
by court users, may be completely different since this indicator does
not distinguish between older, backlogged cases and recently filed cases
that have been processed rather quickly.
- According to the CEPEJ 2020 Report based on 2018 data,
Serbian disposition times for first-instance civil and commercial
litigious cases were 25 days lower than the EU average of 250
days. At 225 days, Serbia also reported a better disposition
time than the Western Balkans average of 258 days. Countries ranking
worse than Serbia in the Western Balkans region were Bosnia and
Herzegovina (483 days) and Montenegro (229 days). Serbia fared worse
than the EU average for matters handled by the Administrative Court,
whereas for criminal ones, it performed only slightly better than the EU
– by five days – as displayed in Figure 37 below.
Figure 37: Disposition Times of 1st Instance Cases According to CEPEJ
2020 Report
Source: CEPEJ 2020 Report
- Disposition times in Serbian courts, totaled for all
courts, decreased from 580 days in 2014 to 267 days in 2019 and 274 days
in 2020. In 2016, it even fell to 253 days due to the
reductions in backlogged enforcement cases. Nevertheless, some of the
variations among court types were so extreme the improved overall
disposition time for 2019 should not be taken at face value. The highest
disposition time per court type in Serbia in 2019 was 20 times higher
than the lowest one - 665 days for the Administrative Court (which was a
decrease from the previous year) compared to 34 days for the Appellate
Misdemeanor Court. Detailed disposition times are displayed in Figure 38
below.
Figure 38:Disposition Times by Court Type from 2014 to 2019
Source: SCC Data and WB Calculations
- The disposition time indicator revealed there were modest
variations for the Basic Court except for enforcement cases.
While disposition times of other case types decreased or were stable
from 2014 to 2019, enforcement cases did not become relatively stable
until 2017. In 2019, the highest disposition time was reported by the
Second Basic Court in Belgrade (985 days), and the second-highest was
reported by the Third Basic Court in Belgrade (831). The First Basic
Court came third with 773 days. In contrast to these high numbers, Basic
Courts in Bor (44 days) and Dimitrovgrad (37 days) reported the lowest
disposition times. Disaggregating the results by case type, as displayed
in Figure 39 below, enforcement cases were the major factor driving the
Belgrade disposition times as courts with no enforcement difficulties
had the lowest disposition times overall and by case type.
Figure 39: Disposition Times by Case Type in Basic Courts from 2014
to 2019
Source: SCC Data and WB Calculations
- A side-by-side comparison of disposition times in
Belgrade’s Basic Courts shows the one-time effort to reduce the number
of backlogged enforcement cases in 2016 was only a stopgap measure, and
did not solve the enforcement problem either for the courts of the
parties involved. While the 2016 concentrated resolution of
enforcement cases produced a marked improvement, the 2019 numbers show a
significant part of the problem has persisted.
Figure 40: Disposition Time in Selected Basic Courts by Case Type in
2019
Source: SCC Data and WB Calculations
- Appellate and Higher Courts also had very broad
variations in their disposition times. Among Appellate Courts
in 2019, the highest disposition time was reported in Belgrade (103
days), while the lowest was reported for Novi Sad (40 days); the Novi
Sad Court had the highest number of appellate judges after Belgrade. The other two Appellate Courts, in
Kragujevac and Nis, were in the middle with 76 to 80 days. The highest
disposition time for Higher Courts was for the court in Novi Sad with
310 days, while the lowest one was in Negotin, with 13 days.
- Commercial Courts had declining disposition times, while
in Misdemeanor Courts, they varied widely. In 2019, the highest
disposition time among Commercial Courts was in Belgrade (163 days),
while the lowest was in Subotica (28 days). Belgrade’s Misdemeanor Court
had the highest time to disposition at 474 days, while the champion
among Misdemeanor Courts was the one in Presevo, at only 100 days.
Perception
of Timeliness as Reported by Court Users
- According to the Regional Justice Survey, the average
number of months from case filing to first instance judgment, as
reported by court users, did not improve over time, and even grew by
four months in business sector cases. The perceived first
instance average duration improved only in civil cases, by one month
compared to 2013. As illustrated in Figure 41 below, in criminal cases,
the average perceived duration for first instance cases was
approximately 16 months, which was one month more than in 2013 and four
months more than in 2009. In misdemeanor cases, the result from 2020
matched the results from 2013. The highest variation was reported in
business sector cases which were perceived as lasting three months more
than in 2013, and four months more than in 2009.
Figure 41: Average Number of Months from Case Filing to First
Instance Judgment as Reported by Court Users
Source: Regional Justice Survey
- In more positive news for the court system, the share of
court users who perceived that their first instance case lasted longer
than it should decreased in 2020 in all examined categories, compared to
both 2009 and 2013 results. Nevertheless, more than one-half of
the users were still dissatisfied with the duration of their first
instance proceeding in all case types except for misdemeanor. In
misdemeanor cases, the number of users that stated that their court
proceeding was longer than necessary halved from 2013 to 2020, from 56
to 27 percent. For the business sector, the percentage of dissatisfied
users declined from 72 percent in 2013 to 54 percent in 2020 although
the perceived case duration increased over the same period.
Figure 42: Share of Court Users who Perceived that their First
Instance Case Lasted Longer than it Should (2009, 2013 and 2020)
Source: Regional Justice Survey
Effective enforcement ↩︎
- This section is designed to synthesize the discussion of
enforcement cases that has run through this chapter, since they
represent one of the top challenges facing Serbia’s court
system. Effective enforcement is a crucial element of any legal
system, affecting the quality of a system
as well as its efficiency. Without effective enforcement of court
decisions, there can be no true access to justice, and any improvements
in other aspects of a system’s efficiency or quality are not worth
pursuing. Effective enforcement also is an essential
requirement of Chapter 23, since it vital to
the rule of law, protection of citizens’ rights, and economic
development.
- In the period covered by this FR, the lack of genuinely
effective enforcement, particularly in large courts, remained one of the
biggest challenges of the Serbian judicial system despite all the
reforms undertaken through 2019. Moreover, there was
insufficient data available to conclude that overall private bailiffs
were doing an effective and/or reasonably priced job of enforcing
cases.
- The introduction of private bailiffs, launched in 2012,
significantly impacted courts’ caseloads, workloads, and
dispositions. Monetary enforcement (mainly of unpaid utility
bills) was removed from courts, which led to a sharp fall in Basic
Courts’ incoming caseloads. Due to implementation problems, several
interpretations and amendments to the Law on Enforcement and Security were passed, which culminated with
the adoption of a new law in 2015 that has been
amended several times since then.
- The 2015 Law on Enforcement and Security introduced
numerous changes designed to address the lingering lack of efficient
enforcement procedures, the number of enforcement cases still in the
courts, the absence of harmonized case law, and the general
dissatisfaction of creditors with the enforcement regime. In
most cases, the Law completely entrusted enforcement of judgments to
private bailiffs. Only four particular case types remained in courts:
(i) those involving the joint sale of immovable property and movable
property, (ii) those in which a debtor is obliged
to do or abstain from doing an act or not to prevent someone else's
action, which s/he would normally be authorized to prevent (iii) family
relationships; and (iv) returning employees to their jobs. The Law also
provided for a two-instance appeal system both for court and private
bailiff enforcement cases.
- Amendments to the Law on Enforcement and Security that
came into force as of 1 January 2020, introduced new measures aimed at
improving efficiency and introducing additional safeguards.
Article 166 transferred all pending enforcement cases from courts to
private bailiffs regardless of their initiation date, and provided
additional options for dismissal of inactive cases and petty claims. The
amendments should result in the dismissal of many dormant court cases,
while new safeguards were added to limit execution again salaries and
pensions and to prevent execution on homes in case of claims worth less
than 5,000 EUR, reduce the costs of executions to parties, etc.
- Other novelties introduced in 2020 were intended to
streamline the enforcement procedure. Electronic filings,
voluntary settlement of claims, electronic auctions, and shorter
deadlines are among them.
- The satisfaction of judges, prosecutors, and lawyers with
the procedure of enforcing court judgments increased improved
consistently from 2013 to 2020. In total, 56 percent of
interviewed judges in 2020 were satisfied with the enforcement procedure
of court judgments, an increase by 25 percentage points over 2013. The
increase with prosecutors was 21 percentage points
and 19 percentage points with lawyers. Figure 43 below compares the
evaluations in the surveys conducted in 2009, 2013, and 2020.
Figure 43: Satisfaction with the Procedure for Enforcing the Court
Judgment (2009 and 2013 – over the past 3
years; 2020 – over the past 12 months)
Source: Regional Justice Survey
Enforcement in Courts
- Despite the notorious reputation of the courts for lax
enforcement of judgments, most large creditors opted to have courts
retain their pending enforcement cases or did not
respond at all when asked if they preferred to keep the cases with the
courts or have them transferred to the new private bailiffs.
For example, according to July 2016 data from the First Basic Court in
Belgrade, creditors chose the court in
417,163 cases court and private bailiffs in 22,944 cases. At the same
time, creditors did not respond in the remaining 554,809 cases. Judges
interviewed by the FR team thought one of the primary reasons for the
creditors’ choice to stay in the courts was because they expected court
enforcement expenses to be lower.
- A significant incoming caseload of enforcement cases was
redirected from courts to private bailiffs. In 2019 the bailiffs’ total pending stock
amounted to 1,968,438 cases, an increase of 22 percent over the previous
year. Seventy percent of cases were categorized as utility bills. In
total, 541,574 cases were disposed or 28 percent of all pending cases in
2018.
- According to 2017 data, the total claimed amount
for the cases redirected to private bailiffs was RSD 555,750,689,547 (~
EUR 4.7 billion), out of which RSD 57,608,669,719 (~ EUR 489 million)
were collected (approximately 10 percent). According to the
Chamber, the collection percentage is higher since the total amount also
includes those claims which are de facto impossible to collect
(e.g. stayed procedures, suspended procedures). (The Chamber’s 2018 and
2019 reports did not provide data on claim values.)
- Basic Courts reduced their pending
enforcement stock by 64 percent in 2019, from 1,935,525 cases in 2014 to
621,674 cases in 2019.
Incoming enforcement cases grew in 2017 due to the dismissals of cases
among Belgrade’s courts (see Box 5).
Figure 44:Incoming, Disposed and Pending Enforcements in Basic Courts
from 2014 to 2019
Source: SCC Data
- Fifty-three percent of cases pending at the end of 2019
in Basic Courts were enforcement cases older than five years (primarily
based on authentic documents or ‘Iv’ registry cases). According to
the SCC’s report, at the end of 2019, 240,492 of Basic Court enforcement
cases were five to 10 years old, while 250,350 were older than 10
years.
- Despite the 2020 legislative amendments and the expansion
of private bailiffs' jurisdiction, many backlogged writs based on
authentic documents were still in Basic Courts as of June 2020.
More precisely, there were 134,655 cases aged five to 10 years and
269,166 cases older than 10 years. It was not clear if these cases were
supposed to be transferred to private bailiffs or to remain in the
courts.
- The congestion ratio of enforcement cases in Basic Courts
improved significantly from 4.88 in 2014 to 1.47 in 2019. There
were still far more unresolved than disposed enforcement cases.
Nevertheless, apart from Basic Courts in Sremska Mitrovica, Bor,
Subotica, Aleksinac, Leskovac, and Petrovac on Mlava,
all Basic Courts resolved more enforcement cases than they received, and
in some courts much more.
Box 14: An Innovative Approach to Enforcement Tracking in the Basic
Court in Krusevac
Private Bailiffs
- Of the approximately 230 private bailiffs in Serbia, 70
were located in Belgrade as of January 2021.
The jurisdiction of a private bailiff corresponds to the territory of a
Higher and a Commercial Court. The Chamber of Private Bailiffs allocated
the enforcement of unpaid utility bills on a random basis and the creditor selected the
private bailiff for other types of cases.
- According to the Law on Enforcement and Security, Ethical
Code , and by Standards of
Professional Conduct regulate the
operations of private bailiffs and govern their accountability.
The Chamber of Private Bailiffs adopted the Code in 2016, and the MoJ
adopted the Standards in December 2019.
- There were few publicly available and regularly updated
sources of information about the work of private bailiffs. This
section draws on what was available online and through interviews, but
much more could be done to open their work to the public.
- Private bailiffs’ statistical data were incomplete and
inconsistent from 2012 until an independent review of reporting issues
was done in 2016. In its 2016 report ‘Analysis of Changes
in the Reporting System on the Work of Private Bailiffs and Statistics
on the Work of Private Bailiffs 2012-2015’,
the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ)
analyzed the bailiffs’ data. Data were found to be inaccurate, many
useful data were not collected (e.g. case age), the collected data were
not used appropriately to monitor the bailiffs and the private bailiff
system, and feedback was not given to private bailiffs to promote their
compliance with applicable rules. Following the report, the MoJ adopted
a bylaw in 2016 that introduced obligatory
reporting forms for bailiffs, and the Chamber of Private Bailiffs
started publishing annual statistical reports in 2017.
However, as of April 2021, there was still no unified IT system for
reporting by individual bailiffs that could facilitate effective
monitoring of their work or more straightforward data collection, and no
independent analysis had been done to assess the quality of the
bailiffs’ reporting since 2016. On the other hand, private bailiffs
continued to criticize the regulations for data collection as too
complicated, overly extensive and requiring too much of their
time.
- Available data indicate the introduction of private
bailiffs has not solved all of the issues in Serbia’s enforcement
regime. Representatives of the Chamber of Private Bailiffs
interviewed by the FR team estimated it took an average of approximately
100 days to dispose of their members’ enforcement cases (although this
assessment may not have included cases with de facto
uncollectable claims), compared to 635 days required for court cases as
of 2018, but this could not be confirmed through available data. For
2019, based on the publicly available data from the Chamber, the FR team
calculated an overall disposition time of 960 days, with 1,165 days for
utility cases and 644 days for other case types. The total clearance
rate was 66 percent, with 64 percent for utility cases and 70 percent
for other case types.
- The introduction of private bailiffs has been met with
opposition in Serbia, as it has been in many other countries.
For instance, there have been complaints against the modus
operandi of private bailiffs, and the governing legal framework has
been perceived as faulty and prone to abuses, specifically in terms of
costs and expenses. Other complaints have alleged that private bailiffs
claim unjustified expenses, while others have claimed violations of
debtors’ rights. In response to these complaints, Serbia made the
legislative changes discussed above and conducted a public information
campaign funded by the USAID Rule of Law Project.
- Serious concerns have been raised over the years
regarding excessive bailiffs’ expenses and accompanying costs included
in the fee schedule. USAID’s analysis of private bailiff fees
and expenses compared the initial costs in court and private bailiffs
cases. It concluded that only in Basic Courts, for claims of up to RSD
30,000 (~ EUR 255), were costs lower in courts than with bailiffs. The
opposite applied to higher claims in Basic Courts and all claims in
Commercial Courts. See Table 12. However, this comparison should be
examined with caution since it did not include all possible additional
bailiffs’ expenses, which can be substantial.
Table 12: Comparison of Enforcement Initial Costs in Courts and with
Bailiffs (2012 Tariff of Private Bailiffs Fees and 2016 Amendments)
| PB/Individuals and Legal Entities |
10,000
~EUR 85 |
3,000,00
~EUR 25 |
- |
| BC/ Individuals |
1,900,00
~EUR 16 |
-37 percent |
| CC/ Legal Entities |
3,900,00
~EUR 33 |
30 percent |
| PB/Individuals and Legal Entities |
30,000
~EUR 255 |
3,000,00
~EUR 25 |
- |
| BC/ Individuals |
3,100,00
~EUR 26 |
3 percent |
| CC/ Legal Entities |
5,700,00
~EUR 48 |
90 percent |
| PB/Individuals and Legal Entities |
60,000
~EUR 510 |
3,600,00
~EUR 30 |
- |
| BC/ Individuals |
4,300,00
~EUR 37 |
19 percent |
| CC/ Legal Entities |
7,500,00
~EUR 64 |
108 percent |
Source: USAID
- A new Tariff of Private Bailiffs Fees came into force on January
1st, 2020, which reduced the list of possible costs and the amounts of
particular fees. The Tariff limits
the number of items that public bailiffs may charge, and the duplication
of proceedings is no longer considered an eligible expense. Although the
Tariff reduces the amounts of individual fees, greater cost reduction is
expected from a reduction in the number of applicable fees and
situations where they are applicable. The amendments were welcomed by
the public, but since the Tariff is new, it is too early for this FR to
evaluate its impact.
Box 15: Tariff or Private Bailiffs Fees
- According to the Chamber of Private Bailiffs, a lack of
case-law harmonization in courts impedes bailiffs’ work. As
required by its Statute, the Chamber tried to
establish a Council for Case-Law Harmonization consisting of both
bailiffs and judges. This was discontinued after the Anti-Corruption
Agency ruled there were possible conflicts of interest between judges
and bailiffs since judges decide on appeals lodged against private
bailiffs’ decisions. To overcome this impediment, the Chamber proposed
to constitute a case-law harmonization mechanism under the MoJ or the
Judicial Academy, but as of April 2021, the MoJ had not decided on the
proposal.
Enforcing Contracts
- Although improving, Serbia still faces significant issues
when it comes to enforcement effectiveness. Frequent
legislative amendments, remaining pending stock of (backlogged)
enforcement cases in courts, and problems concerning the introduction
and operation of private bailiffs hinder the system. The situation may
not be as critical as in the previous period covered by the FR 2014 but
is still far from satisfactory.
- Serbia’s ranking in enforcing contracts as rated by Doing
Business has deteriorated
slightly. In the 2020 report, Serbia ranked 65th
with an average of 622 days needed to resolve a dispute, counted from
the date the plaintiff files a lawsuit until payment. From 2016 onwards,
Serbia’s rank in this category varied from 73rd in 2016,
61st in 2017, 60th in 2018, and finally
65th in 2019 and 2020.
- The cost of enforcing a contract in 2019 amounted to 39.6
percent of the claim value. This was several times higher than
in comparator jurisdictions such as Bulgaria (18.6 percent), Croatia
(15.2 percent), Greece (22.4 percent), and almost double the Europe and
Central Asia (ECA) average of 26.6 percent. For details see Figure 45
below.
Figure 45: Enforcing Contracts in Serbia and Comparator Jurisdictions
– Time and Cost
Source: Doing Business Report 2020
Public Notaries: A Promising
Start ↩︎
- The introduction of public notaries in 2014 removed a
significant load of administrative tasks from the Basic Courts by
allowing them to redistribute some of their personnel to work on other
matters, but the effect of public notaries on probate caseloads is
harder to assess. The primary focus of introducing the notaries
was to remove verification and probate cases from the courts; while the
verification reforms have worked well, courts still handle a significant
number of probate cases.
- In 2019, Basic Courts received and resolved approximately
110,000 verifications, compared to more than 700,000 verification cases
in 2013. A limited range of verifications remained in courts,
e.g., verifications under the Apostille Convention.
Predictably, registry staff saw cuts in their workloads due to the
verifications reforms, while the workloads of judges were not affected
substantially. However, judges benefited indirectly from the increased
availability of administrative resources.
- Little data was available on the efficiency or
effectiveness of having public notaries available to handle probate
cases. The incoming caseload of probate
cases registered under case code ‘O’ was stable and just under 140,000,
and more cases were disposed of than received each year from 2016 and
2019. However, SCC statistical reports
did not segregate probate cases heard before a court from those being
handled by public notaries.
- Unlike enforcement cases that are assigned at the outset
to private bailiffs, probate cases are first opened in Basic Courts and
then assigned to public notaries. These cases become an
integral part of the court statistics and are considered to be cases
disposed of by the court. As a result, the transfer of probate cases may
have augmented available judicial resources, but it cannot be said to
have improved the reported efficiency of the Basic Courts, as noted in
previous sections of this chapter.
- Practices varied among courts; many cases were still
dealt with by courts and not by public notaries. In 2014 courts
were given the option to entrust procedural actions or the entire
probate proceedings to public notaries. The latter possibility was
rarely used, which is why in 2016, the SCC issued so-called Conduct
Instructions to encourage courts to change
their practice. The figures below indicate it took some time for courts
to accept these instructions. According to the SCC 2019 Annual Report, 91 percent of received probate
cases in 2019 were transferred to public notaries, an increase of 38
percentage points over 2018. According to courts interviewed for this
FR, the other nine percent of received probate cases consisted of cases
in which the parties exercised their right to specifically ask for court
processing and cases that, by law, could not be delegated to notaries
(e.g., amendments of probate decisions due to subsequently found assets,
or (rarely) probate cases including the application of foreign law.
Obliging the courts to handle particular types of probate cases and
allowing parties to choose between the courts and the public notaries
seemed to hamper the purpose of the probate reforms, which was to
unburden the courts of simple cases.
- Judges interviewed found public notaries to still were
not be skilled or trained well enough to process probate cases.
Lack of procedural proficiency, un-harmonized practices, and cooperation
of the Chamber of Public Notaries with the courts were identified as
critical problems.
- The FR team found courts varied considerably in their
probate case practices. Judges interviewed described different
internal solutions and practices regarding case allocation (i.e., which
cases were assigned to notaries and which remained in courts) and case
processing in general. This topic deserves systematic monitoring and
more in-depth analysis than this FR can provide.
- SCC data showed there were relatively few objections to
the decisions of public notaries. There were 137 objections in
2016, 132 in 2017, 129 in 2018, and 175 in 2019. In 2015 there were
1,001 objections out of which 928 mistakenly
arose from a single Basic Court, in Bujanovac. Even fewer appeals were
brought before Higher Courts regarding notarial decisions, although
their numbers increased every year: there were 20 in 2015, 52 in 2016,
94 in 2017, 156 in 2018, and 218 in 2019.
Procedural Efficiency ↩︎
- Delays in service of process, poor court time management
and delays in scheduling of hearings, lack of modern case management
techniques, procedural abuses, frivolous claims and appeals, procedural
bottlenecks, and repeated registration of the same matter under many
case numbers all were identified as promoting inefficiency in the 2020
Regional Justice Survey. There was no remarkable improvement in
resolving most procedural inefficiencies in Serbia, although the FR2014
recommended several ways to mitigate their effects.
Some of these issues, e.g., having one matter included in the system
through several different case numbers and the lack of weighted case
management techniques, already have been addressed in this and other
Chapters of this Functional Review. This section provides a brief update
on other procedural factors affecting efficiency.
- Courts still had too few and inadequate means to sanction
parties and their attorneys for introducing delays in the progress of a
case. Parties and attorneys reportedly avoided service of
process, deliberately failed to attend the hearings, submitted
irrelevant briefs, and introduced irrelevant evidence. There were
procedural tools for judges to avoid delays in a case and to discipline
expert witnesses, parties, and attorneys for missing deadlines, but
there were no rules making it mandatory for judges to use the tools in
most circumstances.
- There was no single CMS that could be used to monitor and
detect irregularities so that competent authorities can respond timely
and appropriately. A unified CMS would allow judges to organize
their dockets and allow heads of departments and court presidents to
manage their departments/courts. A specific benefit of CMS is the active
monitoring of case flows to prevent cases from becoming
inactive.
- A substantial portion of those working within the court
system supports the general idea of improving court performance through
the reform of court procedures. More than 70 percent of the
judges and more than 80 percent of lawyers questioned in the Regional
Justice Survey thought improving the courts’ internal processes, the
“responsiveness of the parties” and coordination among institutions
could improve court efficiency. Support for specific reforms might not
be as widespread, but the Survey results indicate those most familiar
with the workings of the system already have identified the source of
many of the system’s inefficiencies. In total, 78 percent of lawyers, 42
percent of judges and 35 percent of prosecutors identified court or
court staff errors as prolonging cases, while obstructive tactics by the
parties were identified as contributing to delays by 72 percent of the
lawyers, 79 percent of the judges and 91 percent of the prosecutors. In comparison to the 2013 survey,
gaps in legislation appear to be a lesser problem according to judges
and prosecutors, while prosecutors think that court of court staff
errors that prolong the case duration has reduced significantly. See
Figure 46 below for details.
Figure 46: Share of Judges, Prosecutors, and Lawyers who Report that
the Listed Reasons are Occasional or Frequent on why Cases Last Longer
than Expected in 2013 and 2020
Source: Regional Justice Survey
- Repetitive cases keep flooding the system with no
adequate procedural mechanism foreseen, other than ad hoc delegations,
to deal with the burden placed on the courts by the complex demands of
many litigants. Army reservist cases analyzed in this chapter
are just one example. Many more of these repetitive cases are deriving
from lawsuits against banks, pension beneficiaries against the Penson
and Disability Insurance Fund, etc. The European Policy Centre analyzed
the current state of play and offered recommendations for introducing
the class action or class lawsuit mechanism, firstly in the consumer
protection field and then, based on that experience, in other areas of
law. This mechanism could be used in parallel with already discussed
delegations and ‘pilot decisions’.
- According to the procedural rules, the most significant
number of lawsuits, especially the repetitive ones, are concentrated in
Belgrade, thus contributing to Belgrade courts’ congestion.
This problem was addressed by the draft amendments to the Civil
Procedure Code in 2021, which have foreseen the transfer of the
territorial jurisdiction of courts from the defendant’s seat to the
plaintiff’s place of residence in consumer or financial services
disputes or claims against the Republic of Serbia or the regional or
local government. The respective amendments have not been adopted so
far, although they would significantly contribute to better caseload
distribution and thus more efficient work of courts with fewer
congestions.
Scheduling and Holding
Hearings
- The time lag between case filings and first hearings
identified by FR2014 (based on 2009 and 2013 data) increased even more
in 2020 in all case types, according to the results of the Regional
Justice Survey. In comparison to 2013, it took the courts about
15 days more to hold the first hearings in criminal, misdemeanor, and
civil cases, while in business sector cases, over one month more was
needed. For a detailed comparison, see Figure 47.
Figure 47: Average Number of Months Passed between Case Filing and
First Hearing, as Reported by Court Users in 2009, 2013 and 2020
Source: Regional Justice Survey
- The average number of hearings increased continually in
business sector cases in 2009, 2013, and 2020, although it reduced
continually in criminal and civil cases and varied in the misdemeanor
cases. The calculated averages are displayed in Figure 48
below. In general, it took about three hearings to dispose of a first
instance case in criminal, civil, and business sector matters and one in
misdemeanor matters.
Figure 48: Average Number of Hearings Held, as Reported by Courts
Users in 2009, 2013, 2020
Source: Regional Justice Survey
- Almost any progress in streamlining court procedures has
a realistic chance of reducing the relatively high levels of cynicism
about court efficiency among lawyers and judges, given the number of
problems identified in the Survey. Court users identified the
key issues hampering court efficiency as including excessive numbers of
hearings and adjournments, cancellations without simultaneous
rescheduling, and the continuation of hearings over long periods.
Lawyers responding to the Survey thought only 46 percent of scheduled
hearings contributed to the resolution of cases they handled, while
businesses thought 65 percent of hearings contributed. Judges,
prosecutors and citizens were between those extremes; judges thought 58
percent of the hearings contributed, while prosecutors placed the number
at 55 percent and citizens placed the number at 59 percent
Figure 49: Hearings that Contributed to Dispute Resolution
Source: Regional Justice Survey
- Tightening scheduling practices for court hearings, as
recommended in the 2014 Judicial Functional Review, was still a pressing need,
although stakeholders disagreed about the reasons for inefficient
hearings and the cancellation of hearings.
Citizens and businesses primarily blamed courts and opposing parties for
inefficient and canceled hearings. Lawyers identified the court, other
parties and their representatives (although not
prosecutors), and other participants such as lay and
expert witnesses as reasons for the waste of time. Courts and
prosecutors agreed that parties and their representatives (again not
including prosecutors) and other participants were the primary
offenders.
Service of Process
- There were no data indicating that the use by court staff
of new tools to locate parties and witnesses significantly improved the
service of process in Serbian courts.
After the 2014 Judicial Functional Review identified many of the issues
regarding service, there were amendments to the CPC
and Civil Procedure Code and an agreement with the Postal Service was
reached to improve the service of process. The CPC introduced much
broader means of service, including several options for personal
delivery. The amendments to the Civil
Procedure Code created new forms for delivery, imposed deadlines for
procedural steps to be completed and penalties for dilatory practices by
parties.
- The 2017 agreement between the HJC and the Postal
Service may have made the service
of the process more efficient, but the FR team could not verify that due
to a lack of data. Judges interviewed by the FR team, however,
thought technical instructions in the agreement had improved service of
process effectiveness. Provisions in the agreement specified the rules
of service by category and gave the courts access to electronic postal
records, so they could track the delivery status of individual
notices.
- Access to electronic address records by the courts
expedited the service of process, but there were still bottlenecks in
the courts’ internal processes for service. Courts obtained
access to databases of addresses and municipal registries of births,
deaths and marriages. Nevertheless, the FR team encountered reports that
the courts’ administrative staff felt the excessive case numbers caused
internal delays in the service of process, particularly in civil
departments.
- An analysis done by a USAID project found service of process
via the Postal Service still was the predominant method of
service. The study, published in 2018, found it was rare for
courts to use tracking of service by available electronic services, and
that the CMS in courts were not connected to postal e-services. Courts
also rarely used the available self-standing postal applications, such
as the Electronic Register of Received Mail (EPK) application.
- In 2020 ,a software for the automatic processing of
parcels was developed for Serbian courts and it was being piloted in
2021 in the Basic Court in Nis and some other courts.
Basically, the software covers the printing and bar coding of all
documents, envelopes, and receipts, and addresses can be checked through
the system in the postal registry. The activity is a part of the USAID
Rule of Law Project.
The Use of Expert Witnesses
- Recent World Bank data
provided no support for a common view that, in general, experts
are used in too many cases. On average, expert witnesses in
Serbia appeared in only 13.5 percent of civil and commercial litigation
cases, criminal cases and commercial offenses, as displayed in Figure
50. Expert witnesses breached the deadline in more than 50 percent of
all reviewed cases in Basic Courts and in more than 40 percent of all
reviewed cases in Commercial Courts. However, statistics indicated that
the time required for expert witnesses to produce their opinions did not
contribute to lengthy trials. Comparing the time for experts to generate
their opinions to total trial times, the work of expert witnesses took
less than 10 percent of total trial time.
Figure 50: Expert witness engagement (compared to the number of civil
and commercial litigation cases, criminal cases and commercial
offenses)
Case Management
- Serbia’s courts generally still failed to use
standardized forms and templates as recommended by the 2014 Judicial
Functional Review, although some judges reportedly created their own and
shared with their peers, and some templates were produced as the result
of specific projects. An electronic database of templates and
forms sponsored by the SCC would facilitate quicker case processing,
contribute to practice harmonization, reduce the number of procedural
mistakes and could reduce the number of appeals based on purely
procedural issues.
- Inefficiencies are still created by a lack of joinder of
similar cases. In the FR 2014, Serbian stakeholders noted that
there are many cases handled separately that could have been joined thus
benefiting the parties and the court. A recent example of such cases are
56,342 military reservists' claims lodged with the Higher Courts that
were not joined. Productivity norms still do not
encourage judges to join cases, and lawyers are reluctant to request it
since it reduces their revenue opportunities. Interviewed judges point
out that joining of cases is less optional in criminal than in civil
cases. A positive example of internal coordination was presented by the
Higher Court in Belgrade where presidents of criminal panels meet and,
together with the court president, discuss possible joinders.
Legislative changes and guidance from higher instances could relieve the
courts of this avoidable case duplication.
Efficiency in
the Delivery of Administrative Services ↩︎
- The share of administrative services that were completed
within 30 minutes reduced from 45 percent in 2013 to 17 percent in 2020,
while the share of administrative services that took over 180 minutes
increased by four times, from eight to 34 percent. Although
there is no stated reason for these changes, it could be that the
services that remained in courts are more complex for
the parties and the courts. See Figure 51 below.
Figure 51: Citizens’ Time Spent in Minutes to Complete an
Administrative Task, 2009, 2013, 2020
Source: Regional Justice Survey
- Simultaneously, there were very few changes perceived by
business users. One-quarter of the administrative services
lasted up to one hour, while approximately one-third of the
administrative services took two to five hours. Ten percent of
administrative services, an increase of five percentage points compared
to 2013, took more than 10 hours.
Figure 52: Businesses’ Time Spent in Working Hours Complete an
Administrative Task, 2009, 2013, 2020
Source: Regional Justice Survey
- In 2020, 33 percent of the citizens needed to visit the
courthouse only once to complete an administrative task, a decrease of
18 percentage points compared to 2013. However, an increased
share of businesses (50 percent in 2020 compared to 45 percent in 2013)
completed their task in one visit. The number of businesses that needed
to visit the courthouse three times or more increased from 17 percent to
28 percent. A detailed comparison is illustrated by Figure 53
below.
Figure 53: Number of Courthouse visits required to complete
administrative task as reported by users of administrative services
Source: Regional Justice Survey
- The share of administrative tasks that the citizens could
complete at one place dropped from 68 percent in 2013 to 55 percent in
2020, but increased for businesses by three percentage points from 65
percent to 68 percent. At the same time, the number of
administrative tasks that required going from door-to-door doubled for
both categories, from seven percent to 15 percent for citizens, and from
six percent to 13 percent for businesses. Figure 54 lays out the details
for 2009, 2013 and 2002.
Figure 54: Share of users of administrative services who did or did
not go from door to door in 
2009, 2013
and 2020
Source: Regional Justice Survey
- According to surveyed citizens, efficiency in the
delivery of administrative services in 2020 declined, while for
businesses, it improved slightly. One-half of the citizens in
2020 perceived that their administrative tasks could have been completed
in a shorter time, compared to 38 percent in 2013. For businesses, 50
percent perceived that the services could have been faster in 2009,
compared to 42 percent in 2013 and 40 percent in 2010. Surprisingly,
some aspects of the services that were perceived less favorably than in
the past, like the increase in the share of going from door to
door.
- The results of the Regional Justice Survey described in
this section point out some of the weaknesses of court services that
need to be addressed. Although the administrative tasks
remaining with the courts are among the more complex ones, the system
can still improve more of its procedures to reduce the number of visits
and the time needed to complete the tasks. Identifying reasons for the
increases in waiting times and visiting multiple doors would be the
first step towards increasing of courts’ efficiency in administrative
tasks.
Impact of
the Covid-19 Pandemic on Court Efficiency ↩︎
- Unsurprisingly, in 2020 Serbian courts received and
resolved fewer cases than they did in 2019; however, the demand declined
by 16 percent and dispositions declined by 11 percent. In 2019,
courts received 2,224,102 cases while 1,867,911 were received in 2020.
The lower number of incoming cases in 2020 was due not only to the
COVID-19 pandemic, but also to the transfer of more enforcement
authority to public bailiffs at the beginning of the year. The
Administrative Court was the only court that received more cases in the
first half of 2020 compared to the same period in the previous year, due
to the so-called electoral cases. The only three court
types that managed to produce clearance rates that exceeded 100 percent
in 2020 were the Appellate Courts, the Basic Courts, and the Commercial
Courts. However, all three court types benefited from lower incoming
cases as their dispositions also decreased in comparison to the previous
year.
- Also, in 2020, courts disposed of a total of 2,013,829
cases, compared to 2,268,769 cases disposed of during 2019.
This difference was a direct result of the state of emergency declared
by the National Assembly due to the pandemic. From March 15, 2020, until
May 6, 2020 the courts could act only on urgent cases, while hearings in
all other cases were postponed indefinitely.
- At this point, the pandemic did not cause direct
bottlenecks since the fall in productivity was followed by the fall in
demand but once the crisis is over, most probably the courts will be
swamped with cases that were not filed earlier or were directly caused
by the pandemic (bankruptcy, insolvency, labor, and unpaid debt disputes
due to the economic crisis). Presumably, the backlog will
increase due to lower court activity in 2020 and the aforementioned
higher incoming caseloads.
Box 16: Mitigating the Effects of Lockdowns on Court Procedures
Recommendations and Next
Steps ↩︎
The 2014 Functional Review provided eight actionable recommendations
to improve court efficiency. Some of the recommendations have been
implemented over time, either fully or partially, with varying degrees
of success. However, some were left pending.
Recommendation 1: Upgrade statistical reporting on court
efficiency.
Existing statistical reports, although detailed, lack specific
dimensions recognized by the Functional Review as significant for
successful monitoring of the judicial system. The SCC’s portfolio of
reports should be expanded.
- Establish a Working Group with representatives of the SCC, HJC,
and MOJ. (SCC, HJC, MOJ - short- term)
- Revise existing reports and specify forms for:
- Aging list of resolved cases
- Tracking of delegated cases and reporting them in order to avoid
duplication
- Tracking of probate cases in courts and assigned to public
notaries (exclude cases disposed by public notaries from court
dispositions)
- Average disposition times based on actual data (Working Group –
short-term)
- Define data needed to facilitate generating of specified reports.
(Working Group – short-term)
- As appropriate, develop a list of the data fields to be included
in the courts’ CMS (and relevant reporting/business intelligence tools
if applicable) to facilitate report generation. (Working Group –
medium-term)
- Prepare and disseminate materials to all staff responsible for
data collection and reporting in the courts, the HJC, and the MOJ. (SCC,
HJC, MOJ – medium-term)
- Inform the public about the upgrade of statistical reporting on
court efficiency through the SCC’s website and press release. (SCC –
medium-term)
- Periodically disseminate reports to the public. (SCC –
continuous)
Recommendation 2: Equalize caseloads in courts.
Caseloads and workloads are unevenly distributed among courts and
within courts, with no clear pattern. The following activities aim to
analyze unequal caseload distribution and review rules on the delegation
of cases among courts. Within courts, they seek to review the
distribution of tasks and responsibilities among judges, legal
associates, court bailiffs, and clerks/typists, ensuring that
administrative and procedural work is effectively delegated to non-judge
staff.
- Analyze unequal caseload distribution in Serbia and review rules
and practices on the delegation of cases. (SCC – medium-term)
- Analyze experience from comparator jurisdictions regarding
optimal caseload distribution. An example is Croatia, which, instead of
territorial jurisdiction of appeals, randomly assigns appeals through a
CMS and permits second-instance County Courts to decide appeals from
Municipal Courts in civil and criminal cases. This reduces the time to
decide appeals and evens out the workload. This reform has also
increasingly harmonized case law across the court system, improving
Court Quality. (SCC – medium-term)
- Review the existing allocation of judges to cases. Analyze
applicable rules and statistical data. (SCC
- – medium-term)
- Investigate the possibility of (temporary or permanent)
relocation of judges to more burdened court locations. (SCC –
medium-term)
- Consider changing the jurisdiction of the SCC relative to the
Appellate Courts to direct fewer cases to it because cases should be
heard at the lowest jurisdictional level possible. (SCC, MOJ –
medium-term)
- Prepare a proposal for amendments of related laws and bylaws if
appropriate. (SCC, MOJ – medium-term)
- Monitor implementation of the case-weighting formula. (SCC, MOJ –
medium-term).
- Inform the public of carried-out activities through the SCC web
page and press releases. (SCC – continuous)
Recommendation 3: Unify practices for the opening of a new
case.
There is no agreed-upon definition of what constitutes a case or
agreement on how cases are processed and reported. This, in turn,
inflates the number of cases counted in court statistics. Existing
practices relating to the opening of new court cases should be
revised.
- Examine procedural rules and Rules of Court Procedure and analyze
individual court practices to identify what constitutes a case. (SCC –
medium-term)
- Adopt clear and stricter rules in the form of guidelines in
defining a case. (SCC – medium-term)
- Disseminate prepared guidelines and organize workshops in
regional centers. (SCC – medium- term)
- Implement newly adopted rules for CMS and automatically disable
incompliant practices in the opening of a new case. (MOJ, SCC –
medium-term)
- Monitor courts’ compliance with newly adopted rules through
regular inspections. (HJC, MOJ – medium- term)
Recommendation 4: Revise Commercial Courts’ jurisdiction over
commercial offenses.
A sudden surge of incoming commercial offenses, triggered by the
implementation of the new Accounting Act, caused a bottleneck in the
Commercial Courts. The jurisdiction of Commercial Courts over commercial
offenses should be revised in line with comparator jurisdictions to
identify possibilities for legislative amendments that would decrease
their burden.
- Establish a Working Group consisting of SCC, MOJ, and Commercial
Courts representatives. (MOJ
- – short-term)
- Analyze the Commercial Court’s workload of commercial offenses
over the last four years. (MOJ, Working Group – short-term).
- Identify examples from comparator jurisdictions concerning
commercial offenses. (MOJ, Working Group – medium-term)
- Using these analyses and the examples identified, prepare
amendments to related laws and bylaws to relieve the burden on
Commercial Courts. (MOJ, Working Group – medium-term).
Recommendation 5: For multiple cases with identical or
similar factual issues, consider consolidating cases or adjudicating a
pilot case and applying the findings to closely related
cases.
- Analyze current experience with multiple cases that have
identical or similar factual issues. (SCC – short-term)
- Conduct comparative legal analysis of how other European
countries approach multiple cases in light of the requirements of the
Constitutional court decision form 2012.
(SCC, MOJ – short- term)
- Explore the possibility of introducing a pilot case procedure for
specific types of cases (e.g., consumer protection). (MOJ –
medium-term)
- Evaluate the processing of cases under such a pilot case
procedure; determine lessons learned, and consider expanding the process
to other types of cases. (HJC, SCC – long-term)
Recommendation 6: Conduct further analysis to determine the
reasons for low clearance rates in the Administrative Court in 2018 and
an improvement in clearance and dispositions in 2019.
While other courts (of general and special jurisdiction) displayed
efficiency variations between courts and over time, it can be easier to
identify the factors that determine efficiency in a more limited
setting, holding constant the type of cases.
- Determine the role of changes in resources and practices in both
the challenging year of 2018 and the improved year of 2019. Infer
lessons for the Administrative and other courts. (SCC –
short-term)
Recommendation 7: Remove procedural obstacles for timely case
resolution.
Long times to disposition and a significant backlog of ‘old’ cases
remain the primary problems in Serbian courts. The activities suggested
below are intended to identify procedural obstacles to timely case
resolution. (HJC, SCC, professional associations – medium-term)
- Create joint Working Groups among judges and private attorneys to
identify and develop means for addressing practices causing delays in
processing cases. (MOJ – short-term)
- Using surveys and analysis of available data, develop statistical
information on common bottlenecks to inform the Working Group
discussion. (SCC, MOJ – continuous)
- Develop proposals to tackle factors that contribute to delay
(e.g., non-appearance of witnesses, parties, prosecutor, or judge;
unnecessary expert witnesses, issues in process service). (SCC, MOJ
- Select four to six pilot courts of various sizes to test
identified solutions. (SCC – medium-term)
- Roll out changes in procedure and practice, amend laws and bylaws
and deliver training for courts. (MOJ, SCC, JA – medium-term)
Recommendation 8: Expand SCC’s competitive Court Rewards
Program to recognize additional initiatives by lower courts. (SCC –
short-term)
Recommendation 9: In evaluating the performance of judges,
take into account the complexity of cases as well as the number of cases
resolved to encourage judges to prioritize older and more complicated
cases, rather than prioritizing the quick resolution of simpler cases.
(HJC – medium-term)
- Establish a working group to amend the Rules on the evaluation of
judges. (HJC– short-term)
- Draft amendments to the Rules on the evaluation of judges to take
into account the complexity of cases. (HJC – medium-term)
Recommendation 10: Consider repealing the 2016 legislation
that allows for the filing of complaints in connection with the
protection of the right to a trial within a reasonable
time.
- Explore other avenues for protection of the right to a fair trial
within a reasonable time. (HJC, MOJ – medium-term).
Recommendation 11: Monitor the work of private notaries in
probate cases (workloads, costs, quality, and integrity).
Limited data is available in Serbia on the efficiency or
effectiveness of having public notaries handle probate cases. Lack of
procedural proficiency, un-harmonized practices, and the absence of
cooperation of the Chamber of Public Notaries with the courts was
identified as critical problems in their performance.
- Analyze data on the use of private notaries to assess their
effectiveness and impact on the court performance. For more refined
data/reports, see Recommendation 1. (MOJ, SCC – short-term,
ongoing)
- Identify and analyze courts’ practices, including which cases are
given to public notaries and what criteria are used for such
assignments, exclusions, and exemptions. (MOJ, SCC –
short-term)
- Identify laws, bylaws and/or other documents that regulate the
processing of probate cases, including the jurisdiction of public
notaries over probate cases. (MOJ, SCC – short-term)
- Analyze examples from comparator jurisdictions and prepare
amendments to identified regulations to streamline the assignment of
probate cases to public notaries. Consider the transfer of jurisdiction
over subsequently found assets to private notaries. (MOJ, SCC –
short-term)
- Adopt legislative amendments and prepare implementation
instructions for courts. (MOJ, SCC – medium-term)
- In cooperation with the Chamber of Public Notaries, provide
mandatory practical training for public notaries on procedural matters.
Provide certificates for attendees. (MOJ, Chamber of Public Notaries –
medium- term)
Recommendation 12: Prepare a database of templates and
standardized forms.
Serbia’s courts generally still failed to use standardized forms and
templates as recommended by the 2014 Judicial Functional Review,
although some judges reportedly created their own and shared them with
their peers, and some templates were produced as the result of specific
projects. Templates and standardized forms in Serbian courts would
facilitate a consistent approach to procedural decisions, contribute to
practice harmonization, reduce the number of unintentional mistakes,
fast-track daily decision-making and reduce the number of appeals.
- Form Working Groups among judges of all instances divided by case
type, identify the most frequent routine decisions/documents and develop
templates in a standard file format such as MS Word. (SCC –
short-term)
- Create an internal national database and publish created
templates. Disseminate access information among judges and associates
and provide a contact for suggestions. (SCC – short- term)
- Maintain a permanent group of judges for regular updates of
existing templates and for adding new ones. (SCC – continuous)
Recommendation 13: Streamline service of process in
courts
The Serbian judicial system should continue reducing the requirements
for service of process and reassessing arrangements for the delivery of
service.
- Analyze current administrative procedures for service of process
as defined by the Rules of Court Procedure. Analyze practices in several
courts of different sizes. (MOJ, SCC, Courts – short-term)
- Collect and monitor data on service of process, including
attempts and costs, and identify sources of variations. (MOJ, SCC,
Courts – short-term)
- Analyze the effects of the new contract signed with the Postal
Service for the needs to increase training and raise awareness among
postal officers of their requirements and the sanctions for abuse.
Create a plan to monitor results and report on changes. (MOJ –
short-term)
- Identify possibilities for simplification of administrative
procedures by using available ICT solution models already piloted by
USAID in some courts. Eliminate administrative bottlenecks and
reorganize administrative procedures. Implement electronic printing and
sorting of envelopes. (MOJ – short-term)
- Organize administrative services in courts more efficiently and
effectively by employing faster and simpler working methods for service
of process administration. (HJC, MOJ, SCC– short-term)
- Continue working with courts to build flexibility into their
budgets so that they can innovate, for example, by contracting with
private couriers or delivery people. (HJC, MOJ – medium-term)
- Provide training to courts on service of process rules and
possibilities and encourage them to take a proactive approach to manage
service of process. (SCC, JA – medium-term)
- Amend procedural laws to create a presumption of continuous
service after the first service of process, with the party required to
notify the court of any change of address and sanctions for
non-compliance. (MOJ, HJC – medium-term)
- Create guidelines for the reorganization of service of process
administration in courts, disseminate these among courts, and support
their implementation. As necessary, amend the Rules of Court Procedure.
(MOJ, SCC – medium-term)
- Inform the public about the amendments and new procedures. (MOJ,
SCC – continuously)
Recommendation 14: Improve the efficiency of court bailiffs’
work.
- Consider replicating a practice adopted by the Basic Court in
Krusevac requiring bailiffs to record their work in a specifically
developed IT application, allowing the court to monitor bailiffs’ work.
This was acknowledged in the 2019 Court Rewards Program. (SCC –
short-term)
Recommendation 15: Increase transparency of private bailiffs’
work.
Private bailiffs took over a substantial share of enforcement cases
in Serbia, but very little information is available about their
performance. This recommendation is designed to increase the
transparency of private bailiffs’ work by publishing reports on their
caseloads, workloads, case assignment,
efficiency, and timeliness.
- Analyze currently publicly available information on private
bailiffs’ work (efficiency, effectiveness, quality, transparency). (MOJ
– short-term)
- Investigate practices in comparator jurisdictions. (MOJ –
short-term)
- Prepare statistical and narrative reports. Determine the
frequency of publication, at least annually and more frequently if
necessary. (Chamber of Private Bailiffs, MOJ – short-term)
- Adopt or amend regulations to support these transparency
measures. (Chamber of Private Bailiffs, MOJ – short-term)
- Inform the public about bailiffs’ activities through the
Chamber’s web page and press releases. (Chamber of Private Bailiffs –
short-term)
Recommendation 16: Improve public satisfaction with
administrative services by identifying reasons for the increases in
waiting times and for visiting multiple doors, or multiple
times.
- Conduct a detailed workflow analysis to assess the efficiency of
administrative services in courts. (HJC, MOJ – medium-term)
- Draft clear procedural instructions for the public and court
staff and streamline procedural bylaws in order to decrease waiting
times and multiple visits to the courts. (HJC, MOJ –
medium-term)
Recommendation 17: Establish preparatory
departments.
Judges, court staff, and practicing attorneys acknowledged that
preparatory departments in all medium- and large-sized courts would be useful, particularly for
ensuring that cases are ready for hearing. However, the absence of staff
or commitment to the process has hindered implementation so far.
Although envisaged by legislation, preparatory departments have not been
consistently established among medium-sized and large courts in
Serbia.
- Establish preparatory departments in those medium-sized and
larger courts that lack them. Collect baseline data on time to
disposition and procedural efficiency, and monitor results to continue
monitoring the effects of the establishment of preparatory departments.
(SCC, HJC – short-term)
- Disseminate information about results to all courts and recognize
good performance. (SCC, HJC
Recommendation 18: Tighten hearing scheduling
practices.
- Scheduling and holding hearings remain a weak spot of Serbian
procedural efficiency. An increasing number of hearings in a single
case, many canceled and adjourned hearings, and an increasing time lag
between case filing and the first hearing continue to impede court
efficiency and timeliness. There have been no noticeable efforts to
implement changes since the 2014 Functional Review.
- To maximize the use of limited courtroom facilities, schedule
hearings throughout the day, except in extraordinary circumstances.
(SCC, HJC/Courts – short-term)
- Collect and analyze data on canceled and adjourned hearings and
their reasons. (SCC/Courts – short-term)
- Require that judges set the next hearing date within a
standardized timeframe at the close of each hearing, with only limited
exceptions. (SCC/Courts – short-term)
- All courts must use existing case management software to schedule
court hearings electronically.
Provide training as necessary. (SCC, JA, MOJ – medium-term)
- Collecting, monitoring, and analyzing data on scheduling
patterns, such as reasons for adjournment, could inform future
reforms.
Recommendation 19: Consistently impose procedural discipline
measures.
- Develop clear guidelines requiring judges across all courts to
consistently apply measure of procedural discipline to expert witnesses,
parties and attorneys consistently for missed deadlines (allowing for
specific exceptions and documented reasons for leniency) and for abusive
practices that delay case disposition. (SCC – short-term)
Recommendation 20: Expand on the use of e-Justice tools, such
as video hearings, developed during the COVII-19 pandemic to increase
the efficiency of courts.
- Implement due process taking into consideration rules, such as
protection of attorney-client privilege, equal access to technology,
principle of orality, in line with the practice of the European Court of
Human Rights. (MOJ, SCC – medium-term)
